Dortmund's Sociology of Science and Technology at EASST2026 in Krakow
Panels
Dortmund's Sociology of Science and Technology team is involved in organizing three panels at EASST2026: Ann Kristin Augst is a co-organizer of Panel P079 “Fragile Futures: Living with Chronic Post-Infectious Illnesses”; Ronja Trischler is co-organizing Panel P008 “Building and Repairing the Future,” as well as Panel P061 “The Futures of Qualitative Inquiries: “Post-Digital Methods, Pre-Digital Methodologies, ” in which Cornelius Schubert will also participate as a discussant.
Here are the short abstracts; further information is available via the respective links:
P008 Building and Repairing the Future
Starting from the premise that practices of creating the past, present, and future are interconnected, our panel discusses similarities and differences between building and repairing and how their connection can inspire future design and strengthen the collaboration between STS and engineering.
P061 The Futures of Qualitative Inquiries: Post-Digital Methods, Pre-Digital Methodologies
This panel bridges pre-digital methodologies with post-digital challenges. We explore how qualitative inquiry can engage with AI as an “informant” by re-grounding inquiry in core principles (symmetry, iteration, interpretation). We invite conceptual papers on this dialogue.
P079 Fragile Futures: Living with Chronic Post-Infectious Illnesses
The panel explores how people with chronic post-infectious illnesses such as ME/CFS navigate fragile futures and social absences, asking how STS approaches and patient knowledge can help create more resilient care infrastructures.
Paper presentations
The team will also be represented at the conference with two paper presentations: Ann Kristin Augst and Cornelius Schubert will present “Patient-Generated Data: The Temporalities of Experience and Expertise in Lifestyle Devices and Medical Authority” in Panel P004: “Caring for Limits in and Beyond the ‘Now’: The Case of Health.”
Based on interviews with patients and doctors in Germany, we examine how lifestyle devices reshape medical authority through patient-generated data (PGD). We demonstrate how caring for epistemic limits unfolds across conflicting temporalities of continuous monitoring and temporary consultations.
And Julia Kurz will present in Panel P063: “STS Confessions as Politics of Resilience: Making Untold Stories Matter” on “Success and Failure Are Not Neutral—About the Interplay of Power, Ethics, and Negotiations in Interdisciplinary Projects.”
The untold story of this talk is how power structures and personal ethical beliefs—including those of STS researchers—form the basis of, and frame, the interactive processes that lead to the implementation—or at least the dominance—of “shared” definitions of success in complex projects.