Department for Science and Technology Studies (STS-UNIVIE)
The Department is part of the Social Science Faculty of the University of Vienna and is, since more than 30 years, an internationally highly visible center for interdisciplinary studies on the relations between scientific, technological and societal developments (https://sts.univie.ac.at). Through our research we aim at fostering reflection on scientific and technological developments with researchers and students from all disciplines, but also with wider constituencies of society. In many of our projects we closely collaborated with different knowledge communities and we have a long-standing track record of participatory research with citizens. The department is also very active in teaching, leading an international English language MA program “Science-Technology-Society” for students from all disciplines as well as a PhD program in STS.
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt is the head of the department and has been working on questions related to the developments in (bio)medicine and digital health and their relation to societal change for the last two decades. Within Smart4Health, Ulrike Felt leads and oversees together with her team the co-creation efforts. This means developing and implementing processes that allow citizens as well as professional users to participate in the shaping of the health data platform and its functionalities. This is done in close collaboration with all other partners in the project. Furthermore STS-UNIVIE is part of the Innovation Core Team, the Ethics Core Team and leads the Steering Board of the Ethics, Legal and Governance Committee. The STS-UNIVIE team also encompasses next to Ulrike Felt two experienced researchers, Susanne Öchsner and Robin Rae.