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Ulrike Felt

University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Faculty Member

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Papers by Ulrike Felt

Should I provide my health data for research? Citizens assessing the value of data provision

Big Data & Society, 2025

In March 2024, the European Parliament and Council agreed to implement the European Health Data S... more In March 2024, the European Parliament and Council agreed to implement the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the first domain-specific common EU data space. Next to improving healthcare delivery in national and cross-border settings, the EHDS aims to advance the reuse of health data in research, innovation, policy-making, and personalized medicine. However, to fully harness the potential of a data-driven approach to health research and care, citizens must be willing to provide their data for research. To understand the conditions under which citizens are prepared to do so, this article investigates the situated ways in which they reflect on and assess their (non)provision of digitally available health data for research. Our empirical work is situated within a large-scale EU-funded project that sought to develop a health data infrastructure for transborder healthcare and research. Using a diverse set of engagement methods, we investigated how citizens value the provision of their health (care) data for secondary use in research and examined the valuation constellations that shape their assessments. Our analysis shows that citizens' valuations of a digital health infrastructure are by no means binary-defining it as either worth supporting or not-and that visions, positions, and decisions cannot be considered stable over time. Their willingness to share health data is shaped by dynamic evaluations grounded in mediated reciprocity, assessments of future data-use-related uncertainties, and the need for relational transparency. Realizing and maintaining the value of health data infrastructures thus requires continuous efforts, which must be reflected in both their material design and governance.

Residues that matter: Why innovation societies need to rethink their responseability

Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study , 2025

This essay critically examines the consequences of the evolving role of innovation in contemporar... more This essay critically examines the consequences of the evolving role of innovation in contemporary societies, where it functions as both a normative imperative, an economic driver, and a policy blueprint for addressing global challenges. Framed through discourses of competitiveness, sovereignty, and resilience, innovation is increasingly pursued as an existential necessity. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies and empirical material from the ERC project Innovation Residues (Felt, 2021a), the essay argues for reading innovation in reverse-not through its promises and envisioned futures, but through the material, infrastructural, and epistemic residues it leaves behind and collateral futures they create. These long-lasting traces, often rendered invisible, offer an alternative vantage point that challenges linear narratives of innovation-driven progress and invites more critical assessments of an innovation's value and impact. It interrogates the limitations of existing responsible innovation frameworks, particularly their relatively narrowly framed focus on one-time, early-stage, and input-centric interventions, and advocates a conceptual shift toward spatiotemporal geographies of response-ability. Stressing the need to develop "arts of noticing" innovation's many residues, the essay outlines an expanded concept of responsible innovation that is more attentive to what endures, accumulates, and is often neglected. It proposes a more reflexive, situated, and care-oriented approach to responsibility - one attuned to innovation's long-term impacts and uneven futures.

Collateral transitions. Reassembling societies, data centres and the twin transition

Environmental Science and Policy, 2025

The so-called 'twin transition' is the latest buzzword in the European Union's (EU) policy discou... more The so-called 'twin transition' is the latest buzzword in the European Union's (EU) policy discourse. It promotes digital technologies as privileged tools to achieve the ambitious goals of the European Green Deal. Much of the literature focuses on implementations of projects that are both 'digital' and 'green'. By contrast, in this paper, we follow an emerging strand of research that takes the 'twin transition'-discourse seriously as a (European) policy object. We expand this perspective by exploring how the 'twin transition'-discourse was translated into two the vastly different political contexts of Austria and Ireland. Our argument is that the timing of this translation shapes the function it plays. In Ireland where the digital transition has already become a material reality in the form of increasingly controversial data centers, it becomes a justification that makes these data centers a part of the solution rather than an environmental problem. In Austria, which perceives itself as in need to catch up with regard to the digital transition, the discourse is shaped by data discussions around the COVID crisis and becomes embroiled in debates about the direction the digital transition should take. Our comparative approach renders visible the diverse environmental and societal consequences of the "twin transition", which we refer to as "collateral transitions." This challenges the language of two intertwining transitions. We argue that to properly assess the full impact of the 'twin transition' and its potentials, we need to attend to these underlying, unintended transitions.

On the environmental fragilities of digital solutionism. Articulating 'digital' and 'green' in the EU's 'twin transition'

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2025

Since 2019, the European Union has championed a novel approach to addressing the mounting environ... more Since 2019, the European Union has championed a novel approach to
addressing the mounting environmental crises: the so-called ‘twin transition.’
This concept posits that digital innovations and sustainability objectives can
reinforce one another, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship. The
increasing prominence of the twin transition in policymaking and related
discourses seems to subtly reconfigure the very framework of environmental
governance. Its pervasive use renders it a quintessential buzzword – albeit a
unique one, as it fuses two already prevalent terms: the ‘digital transition’ and
the ‘green transition.’ This article explores how the twin transition is
constructed within EU policy discourse, examining how these two initially
separate transitions are brought together. This integration, however, is
asymmetric: the logic of digital solutionism increasingly shapes what qualifies as an environmental problem, thereby digitally framing sustainability challenges. Yet, the fragility of this articulation becomes increasingly apparent.
The environmental impacts of digital technologies themselves expose cracks in the assumed synergy between ‘digital’ and ‘green.’ This provides a critical perspective on the digital-solutionist tendencies shaping contemporary environmental governance. Moving beyond these limitations would open new avenues for constructing more multi-dimensional, collectively imagined problem-solving frameworks – ones that harness the potential of digital technologies while acknowledging also its limitations.

Urban Imaginaries as Tacit Governing Devices: The Case of Smart City Vienna

by Pouya Sepehr and Ulrike Felt

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2024

Many cities have formulated strategies, visions, and policies to deploy a local version of the "s... more Many cities have formulated strategies, visions, and policies to deploy a local version of the "smart city." While analysts have frequently focused on tech innovators as central players, this paper takes one step back investigating policy documents and how they open a space to reimagine the city. Taking Vienna as a case study, we examine how policy documents translate and adapt globally circulating smart city imaginaries into local versions. This offers insights into values and power relations that underpin urban imaginaries and allows to reflect how they participate in tacitly governing the future directions of urban transformation. Identifying three dominant narrative strands, we gradually trace the emergence of a sociotechnical imaginary of preservation and (technological/digital) enhancement that discursively underlines the importance of local values. However, simultaneously, we witness the striking absence of the voice of citizens in shaping these future visions and how digital capitalism enters the scene through indicator-driven urban positioning work. This leads us to call for responsible imagineering, which not only means to more collectively imagine and

Infrastructuring citizenry in Smart City Vienna: Investigating participatory smartification between policy and practice

by Ulrike Felt and Pouya Sepehr

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2024

The notion ‘smart city' has found a prominent place in urban visions, policies, planning, and inf... more The notion ‘smart city' has found a prominent place in urban visions, policies, planning, and infrastructure development, often promising citizens’ participation in shaping urban futures. This paper examines the frictions emerging between powerful Smart City Vienna policy imaginaries and their realization in real-world participatory experiments. Drawing on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) sensitivities, we highlight the challenges of giving voice to citizens and, in particular, the limits of participation in projectified (i.e. clearly temporalized) urban transformations. We not only observe the messiness, the unknowns, and uncertainties of participatory smartification processes but also the quite powerful infrastructuring of citizenry through these processes. This points to the need to design participatory processes able to respond to this open-endedness and processuality of temporalized urban transformation, always being attentive to who is experimenting with what and who can participate in shaping urban futures.

Urban Imaginaries as Tacit Governing Devices: The Case of Smart City Vienna

by Pouya Sepehr and Ulrike Felt

Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2023

Many cities have formulated strategies, visions, and policies to deploy a local version of the "s... more Many cities have formulated strategies, visions, and policies to deploy a local version of the "smart city." While analysts have frequently focused on tech innovators as central players, this paper takes one step back investigating policy documents and how they open a space to reimagine the city. Taking Vienna as a case study, we examine how policy documents translate and adapt globally circulating smart city imaginaries into local versions. This offers insights into values and power relations that underpin urban imaginaries and allows to reflect how they participate in tacitly governing the future directions of urban transformation. Identifying three dominant narrative strands, we gradually trace the emergence of a sociotechnical imaginary of preservation and (technological/digital) enhancement that discursively underlines the importance of local values. However, simultaneously, we witness the striking absence of the voice of citizens in shaping these future visions and how digital capitalism enters the scene through indicator-driven urban positioning work. This leads us to call for responsible imagineering, which not only means to more collectively imagine and engineer the future city involving a more diverse set of actors but also to critically reflect related forms of storytelling as performed in policy documents.

Doing co-creation: power and critique in the development of a European health data infrastructure

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2023

This paper engages with the translation of the abstract concept of Responsible Research and Innov... more This paper engages with the translation of the abstract concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) into practice. Our investigation is situated within a large-scale European project seeking to develop a citizen-centered digital health data platform. We specifically engage with co-creation practices and their potential for creating and maintaining inclusive environments generative of critique and empowerment. Critique for us means questioning practices and the modes of thought they rest on, both of ourselves and participants in the co-creation process. We combine a narrative analysis of EU funding calls framing the project with a reflection on our experiences as STS scholars during the co-creation process and on how citizens formulated their critique regarding the health data infrastructure. We end discussing the possibilities and limits of such a co-creation approach and the spaces and modes of critique made possible and, thus, how it lives up to the promises of responsible innovation.

On samples, data, and their mobility in biobanking: How imagined travels help to relate samples and data

Biobanking involves the assembling, curating, and distributing of samples and data. While relatio... more Biobanking involves the assembling, curating, and distributing of samples and data. While relations between samples and data are often taken as defining properties of biobanking, several studies have pointed to the challenges in relating them in practice. This article investigates how samples and data are curated, connected, and made mobile in practice. Building on an analysis of data collected at five hospital-based biobanks in Austria, the article describes and compares biobanking in three types of biobank collections: 'departmental collections', 'project-specific collections' and 'hospital-wide collections'. It draws attention to the invisible work going into this infrastructure and highlights the central role of visions to make samples and data travel to a different location and thus support biomedical research. It shows that while visions of future travels are often epistemologically uncertain, they are informed by social ties and relationships between the collectives involved in the curation of samples and data on the one hand and the imagined users on the other. Finally, we point to the importance that policy actors in this domain consider the aspects we identified-and, in particular, reflect the temporalities inherent in such a research infrastructure.

“I am Primarily Paid for Publishing…”: The Narrative Framing of Societal Responsibilities in Academic Life Science Research

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2020

Building on group discussions and interviews with life science researchers in Austria, this paper... more Building on group discussions and interviews with life science researchers in Austria, this paper analyses the narratives that researchers use in describing what they feel responsible for, with a particular focus on how they perceive the societal responsibilities of their research. Our analysis shows that the core narratives used by the life scientists participating in this study continue to be informed by the linear model of innovation. This makes it challenging for more complex innovation models [such as responsible research and innovation (RRI)] to gain ground in how researchers make sense of and conduct their research. Furthermore, the paper shows that the life scientists were not easily able to imagine specific practices that would address broader societal concerns and thus found it hard to integrate the latter into their core responsibilities. Linked to this, researchers saw institutional reward structures (e.g. evaluations, contractual commitments) as strongly focused on scie...

IMAGINE RRI. A card-based method for reflecting on responsibility in life science research

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2018

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a new buzzword in science policy, pointing t... more Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a new buzzword in science policy, pointing to a shift in the role of research in contemporary societies. While on a discursive level responsibility is easily welcomed, implementing RRI in research practice appears challenging. RRI as an agent for change must compete with other forces shaping the current research system and its institutions, such as innovation orientation, competition and indicator-driven evaluation cultures. To address these challenges, we created a new format for engaging life science researchers in reflections on the meaning of responsibility in their own research practices. In this conceptual paper, we present and discuss a card-based method: IMAGINE RRI. The method's aim is twofold. First, it is meant to empower researchers to appropriate RRI through shared reflection while connecting it to their practices. Second, it aims to enable researchers to reflect on how the institutional context of their work and the embedded values fosters or hinders responsible research practices. Supplementary material (including card design and discussion map) is available under a creative commons license at the following link: https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/view/o:690945.

Unsustainable Growth, Hyper-Competition, and Worth in Life Science Research: Narrowing Evaluative Repertoires in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scientists’ Work and Lives

Minerva, 2016

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsu... more There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and ''hyper-competition.'' Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of ''regimes of valuation'' we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields.

Farmers and scientists in AR4D: Looking at a watershed management project through an STS lens

NJAS: Impact in Agricultural and Life Sciences, 2021

ABSTRACT Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) provides the interface for the meeting of f... more ABSTRACT Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) provides the interface for the meeting of farmers and scientists. This is a meeting of different social worlds, contesting agendas, cultures of cooperation and networks of actors. Like in other disciplines, scientists in AR4D have developed their own culture of science. However, the role of their culture of science in the negotiations and encounters with farmers’ social worlds is rarely discussed. Analysing AR4D with a theoretical framework based on Science and Technology Studies (STS) helps us to highlight important issues of power and access in AR4D. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the introduction of certain technologies has interacted with the lives of people in an AR4D project in Ethiopia, and to highlight the potential and limitations of applying STS to AR4D. We interviewed farmers, scientists, extensionists, policy makers and donors associated with an AR4D project in the Ethiopian Highlands using qualitative social research approaches. Akrich’s theory on scripts provided the theoretical framework for analysis. Our findings provide examples for the re-inscription of technology and access in an AR4D project, leading to trade-offs and shifting of power between different actors. We conclude that understanding AR4D as part of a network of actors with its own culture of science provides an essential learning ground. We recommend STS to be applied more widely in AR4D to explore the nature of these networks to highlight what makes technology work for users in the long term.

How differences matter: tracing diversity practices in obesity treatment and health promotion

Sociology of Health & Illness, 2016

Diversity has become a buzzword in medical care, denoting a re-evaluation of what it means to att... more Diversity has become a buzzword in medical care, denoting a re-evaluation of what it means to attend to differences among human bodies and lives. Questions about what types of differences matter and how they should be defined have become important normative and analytical challenges. Drawing on two case studies, we show how differences between patients and patient-collectives are not simply waiting to be recognised and addressed but also enacted within situated healthcare practices. Although concerns with diversity are present in both cases, they take different forms. In a Viennese health-promotion project for obese clients, care practices are both based on and reproduce large-scale categories that divide the population into distinct subgroups with specific needs. Conversely, in an outpatient clinic for bariatric surgery patients, a technical fix-oriented procedure leads to concerns over diversity becoming an add-on realised by tending to each patient's idiosyncrasies and personal stories. By tracing the practices of diversity and the tensions they produce, we show how classifications and understandings of human difference are based on infrastructures that enable and constrain them. Furthermore, we discuss how they become consequential in healthcare, thereby indicating the importance of remaining reflexive about the political implications of diversity discourse and practice.

Caring For Evidence: Research and Care in an Obesity Outpatient Clinic

Medical anthropology, Jan 12, 2015

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in bariatric surgery rates. This form of o... more In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in bariatric surgery rates. This form of obesity treatment is often subjected to the critique that it turns patients into passive objects of medical intervention. Similarly, efforts to 'rationalize' medicine, as in evidence-based medicine, are sometimes denounced for imposing a 'one-size-fits-all' approach that neglects patient diversity. We argue that these critiques fail to do justice to the complexities of actual care situations. In our ethnographic study of a project for bariatric pre- and aftercare, we show how research protocols not only close down but also open up spaces for patient-centered care. Despite professional cautions, experiences of stigma and broader imaginations of biomedical care often lead patients to embrace surgery as a treatment conceptualized as a technological fix. We argue that investigations of how research and clinical practice intertwine need to be both empirically grounded and sensi...

Timescapes of obesity: coming to terms with a complex socio-medical phenomenon

Health (London, England : 1997), 2014

Obesity is generally considered to be a growing global health problem that results from changes i... more Obesity is generally considered to be a growing global health problem that results from changes in the way we live in late modern societies. In this article, we argue that investigating the complexities of contemporary timescapes (i.e. the entanglement of physical, culturally framed and personally experienced times) is of key importance for understanding how 'the obesity phenomenon' is conceptualised, performed and acted upon. Analysing both focus groups and print-media articles, we identified three major groups of temporal narratives that shape our perception of obesity: trajectories, temporalities and timing. Each group of narratives follows a different logic and performs a specific kind of ordering work: ontological work that defines what obesity 'really is', diagnostic work that assesses the state of contemporary society and moral work that assigns responsibility to act. We show how the narratives are assembled into distinct timescapes that distribute agency in s...

Encounters and places: project negotiations in Galessa, Ethiopia

Multicultural Education & Technology Journal, 2012

PurposeReflections on negotiation processes between farmers and scientists in research projects p... more PurposeReflections on negotiation processes between farmers and scientists in research projects provide insights into issues of participation, power and equity. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how actors chose places to meet, negotiate and represent technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe research involved semi‐structured interviews and participant observation with farmers, scientists, government agricultural advisors (extensionists), policymakers, and staff of development organisations involved in a research for development project in Western Shewa, Ethiopia from 2009 to 2011. It combines theories from social studies of science as well as development studies.FindingsUsing blueprint approaches in research projects will not yield sustainable results. Participation must go beyond consultation or trying to educate farmers. Social relations are at the core of cooperation between farmers and scientists and require much more attention. Powerful choices on modes of represent...

Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research in Practice

Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2016

Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between s... more Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science–society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get (dis-)entangled. This article discusses (1) the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, (2) the prevailing power ...

Work, funding and assessment infrastructures in inter-and transdisciplinary research

Dynamics of inter- and trans-disciplinarity within institutions: Cultures and communities, spaces, and timeframes, 2022

Making and taking time: Work, funding and assessment infrastructures in inter-and trans-disciplin... more Making and taking time: Work, funding and assessment infrastructures in inter-and trans-disciplinary research UIrike Felt This chapter examines discrepancies between visions and realities in inter-and trans-disciplinary research (ITDR), by focusing on the role of temporal imaginaries, structures, and practices prevalent in contemporary academia. Using epistemic living spaces as a sensitizing concept draws attention to entanglement of the lives that researchers can live and the kinds of questions they want to/can address. Building on data from interviews and discussion groups with researchers in a major Austrian university, the chapter zooms into their narratives about how they deal with personal and professional challenges of ITDR, inspirational moments they live when engaging in cross-border collaborations, specific value regimes they encounter, and epistemic and organizational factors that open up or close down possibilities. Three dimensions offer insights into how time matters in ITDR: 'the project' as key organizing principle; careers, socialization and identity work; and value(s) and evaluation practices. The conclusions then argue that making impact of temporal orders invisible and leaving them unaddressed limits the potential of ITDR and leaves in particular younger researchers in a quite vulnerable position when wanting to engage with societal concerns.

Growing into what? The (un-)disciplined socialisation of early stage researchers in transdisciplinary research

Higher Education, 2012

Over past decades we have witnessed considerable debate questioning the capacity of contemporary ... more Over past decades we have witnessed considerable debate questioning the capacity of contemporary research to address the challenges posed by complex societal developments. As a consequence the need for rethinking cultures and practices of knowledge production has moved high on the policy agenda, in particular in areas like natural resource management or more broadly speaking sustainability issues. In this context transdisciplinarity has become one of the key-notions standing for more openness towards and engagement with non-scientific actors all along the process of knowledge production. While there is much debate on the broader issue and programmes are put in place little is known about the research realities in contexts where different kinds of actors-scientists and societal actors-are to be engaged in knowledge production. This paper will focus on early stage researchers and how they manage to reconcile the demands of transdisciplinarity with other normative demands in contemporary research such as accountability, mobility and the rigid "career-scripts" defining access to more stable positions. Using the concept of "epistemic living spaces", which addresses how researchers see their room for epistemic and social manoeuvre within research, the paper thus explores the possibilities and limits of contemporary research structures to accommodate this alternative way of producing knowledge and addresses issues of responsibility towards younger researchers.