The Research Division of Technoscience studies includes the four profile areas

All R&D projects are presented under the list of degree awarded.

Postgraduate degrees awarded in the PhD program Technoscience Studies
Licentiate of Technology Pirjo Elovaara 2001 02 02
Licentiate of Technology Christina Björkman 2002 06 14
Licentiate of Technology Peter Ekdahl 2002 10 25
Doctorate of Technology Birgitta Rydhagen 2002 12 18
Licentiate of Technology Annelie Ekelin 2003 01 27
Licentiate of Technology Inger Gustafsson 2004 05 07
Doctorate of Technology Pirjo Elovaara 2004 05 28
Doctorate of Technology Christina Björkman 2005 05 23
Doctorate of Technology Peter Ekdahl 2005 12 09
Licentiate of Technology Peter Giger 2006 06 09
Licentiate of Technology Peter Okidi Lating 2006 12 04
Doctorate of Technology Inger Gustafsson 2008 01 18
Licentiate of Technology Ellen Kalinga 2008 05 28
Licentiate of Technology Suzan Lujara 2008 05 28
Doctorate of Technology Peter Okidi Lating 2009 03 06
Licentiate of Technology Fatuma Simba 2010 06 28
Doctorate of Technology Ellen Kalinga 2010 12 08
Doctorate of Technology Suzan Lujara 2010 12 08
Doctorate of Technology Peter Giger 2010 12 15
Licentiate of Technology Rebecka Molin 2011 02 11
Licentiate of Technology Charles Otine 2011 03 31
Licentiate of Technology Lydia Mazzi 2011 06 01
Doctorate of Technology Maria Bäcke 2011 05 27
Licentiate of Technology Joshua Mutambi 2011 06 10
Licentiate of Technology Julius Ecuru 2011 09 24
Doctorate of Technology Fatma Simba 2012 09 27
Doctorate of Technology Lydia Mazzi 2012 11 07
Doctorate of Technology Charles Otine 2012 11 07
Doctorate of Technology Tomas Kjellqvist 2013 06 14
Doctorate of Technology Julius Ecuru 2013 11 28
Doctorate of Technology Joshua Mutambi 2013 11 28
Licentiate of Technology Linus de Petris 2013 12 19
Licentiate of Technology Carlos Acevedo 2015 11 06
Licentiate of Technology Linda Paxling 2015 12 16

R&D PROJECTS

Design for digital media

The projects listed can either be doctoral thesis, projects or research projects. In some cases the projects belong to more than one of the four main profile areas of the research division of TechnoScience Studies.

Theoretical Frameworks for ProduSer Oriented Design for Digital Media
Peter Ekdahl, PhD, R&D project

The aim is to develop a research structure as well as theoretical frameworks for the concept ProduSerOriented Design for Digital Media. When starting the process of producing digital media, there are no separate roles as producer and user. The roles are intertwined in complex and dynamic relations. The understanding of these complex relations opens up for new ways of developing relevant and future oriented applications.

The R&D project is closely linked to the under graduate programmes Digital Games, Digital Visual Production, Digital Audio Production, Web Development and Basics for Digital media. The project encompasses development of a deeper and more complex understanding of digital media technology and design as an area of knowledge.

The aim of the project is also to define core areas and develop transformational strategies in order to find out how traditional disciplines relate to the core areas of media technology and design including serious gender perspectives.

Situating Participation
Pirjo Elovaara, PhD, Ass. professor, R&D project

Together with Annika Olofsdotter Bergström and in co-operation of Think Tank Transbaltic Network the project aims to explore the notion of participation in various spaces and places. The project aims also to develop and implement playful methods in specific urban sites, and so asking questions of citizens´ experiences and stories as material for spatial planning. The project will also ask questions of how games can be understood as critical participatory methods in various contexts. The project is thus connected to the field of participatory design when also studying how games can be designed by non-designers.  Besides the very concrete empirical focus the projects finds its nourishment in contemporary feminist technoscientific theories, such as in Karen Barad´s agential realism,

Technological Difference / Creativity Lost
Peter Giger, PhD, R&D project

My current research is a journey into the heart of technological difference. The aim is to examine and relate the institution of control to the philosophy of difference and practices in contemporary technology.

The reason for the project started in an understanding of contemporary society as a culture of technological control. Technological control could be said to increase logarithmically with general growth, since technology is one of the main agents in economical and general growth.

The practices of technological control are based on similarities and dissimilarities, i.e. pattern matching. Thus, control is based on the repetition of identity. It is very difficult, or impossible, to control pure difference. If technological control is increasing, a plausible thought would be that repetition of identity has precedence to repetition of difference, since this skewed balance is built into the technological system of control. This could lead to a society without the will of creating difference since it cannot be matched to recognizable patterns.

The question is how to revitalize the practice of technological difference in a society with a predestination for technological control (and thereby a society which gives precedence to repetition of identity). How to create identity from difference and not from repetition?

The research practice is based on the philosophy of difference developed by Gilles Delezue and inspired by conferences, readings and practices 2015. It is also a continuation of the previous research project of social media and learning done in 2014-2015.

Exploring æffect in media practises
Linus de Petris, PhD project

My research is based in media technology and technoscience. The (onto)epistemological foundation is based on feminist technoscience and proceeds from my licentiate thesis. By transforming my findings in e-government practices, and with design and use of media technology in focus, the research starts with a literature study, which is later combined with one or more action research projects.

In different research situations, the reality production of technoscientific and media technology practices is diffracted to explore concepts such as materialities, sensualities, inscriptions and institutions. Specifically, the research starts by intertwining the concepts of effect and affect, introducing æffect.

Due to a change in employment, my research activities during 2014 have been limited in time to set a new course of action, partly by engaging more in the undergraduate programs.

Digitizing rituals: A technoscience perspective on games as a reality-producin and reality-transforming technology
Anders Falk, PhD project

The main research objective is to provide a technoscientific understanding of games as a reality producing practice, what realities the games produce, how these realities might intra-act with existing realities and what this might mean for the actors involved. The research will highlight examples of what games incorporate from existing cultural mechanics and what they as a subculture contribute to the mainstream culture.

The main aim of the research is to widen the understanding of games and game development for legislators, game developers and players alike.​

Entangling technocultures : feminist technoscience, participation and social change
Linda Paxling, PhD project

My research is based in feminist technoscience, media technology, cultural studies and ICT4D.

The research objective is an explorative study of how media and ICTs, intra-act with the concepts of development, social change and innovation.

My empirical material is two-fold. For my licentiate I worked with ethnographic, action-oriented and participatory methods to address commonalities and differences in the infrastructuring of mobile technologies and development in a Ugandan context.

For the remaining PhD time I am experimenting with methods of transmedial storytelling and critical design practices and entangling these methods with the concepts of situated knowledges, participatory cultures and posthumanism.

Keywords:
feminist technoscience, ICT4D, ethnography, intersectionality, transmedia, participatory design.

Technology as an intrinsic part of humans — from eGovernment to iGovernment
Linus de Petris, PhD project funded by Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth

The research is set in a municipal government context, focusing on participation and design and use of ICT. It is carried out on a basis of action research.

The public sector has for many years declared visions of technology (the Internet in particular) to enable so called 24-hour services, strengthening democracy, empowering civil society to influence policy making and political decisions, and much more. Are these expectations on technology and the Internet in particular to solve problems society realistic? Trying to fully conceptualize the role of ICT in a municipal context and what consequences design will have for different people and processes is very complex, probably not fully graspable.

The theoretical work is inspired by several disciplines, including design theories, technoscience, information architecture and cognitive science. Ideas on design as participation in assemblages of humans and non-humans is a foundation in my work. John Law’s method assemblages and Pelle Ehn’s notion of design things are key in the understandings of contemporary challenges for participation, design and innovation. Another important aspect for the  work is the concept of hyper-reality from the thoughts of Jean Baudrillar

Creativity, innovation and motivation in Swedish higher Education, with focus on media technology graduate educations
Paul Carlsson, PhD project

The PhD project starts in the issue of creativity and how these factors are implemented in technical graduate educations especially in the field of media technology in Sweden.

Educational reports published over the last 20 years have consistently identified creative thinking and problem solving as among the most crucial skills necessary for success in today’s workplace, and thus have called on educational institutions to do more to promote these abilities (Carnevale et al., 1990; Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2008).

The overarching question is how to design a creative learning environment in the context of media technology training. How to encourage creativity, innovation, motivation combined with problem solving and personal development. How to design an ”education of humility” that combines technoscientific understandings with the possibilities of the 21th century.

Alternative fields of play
Annika Olofsdotter Bergström, PhD project

See Feminist Technoscience projects

 

Feminist Technoscience

The New Production of Politics
Elisabeth Gulbrandsen, PhD project

The main objective is to explore conditions for developing responsible technoscientific cultures in and beyond the academy. The linearity as well as the division of labour suggested by the technology push and society pull policy models are heavily criticized for ignoring the complexity and dynamics that emerge partly as a consequence of the success and pervasiveness of science and technology in late modernity.

Science and society have both become transgressive invading each other’s domains, and policy questions are enhanced into political questions. A third, more interactive policy model is emerging figured in transdiscursive terms like strategic science, innovation system, postnormal science, technoscience, mode 2, agora.

Technological Difference / Creativity Lost
Peter Giger, PhD, R&D project

See Design for Digital Media projects.

Alternative fields of play
Annika Olofsdotter Bergström, PhD project

The aim of my research is to explore how site- specific games as a process can connect players to different worlds and concepts to produce new knowledge and empowerment.  The node in my work is the multi-layered vision where different situated bodies will rub against each other to explore new forms of actions, transcriptions of the world and reconstructed subjectivities. I want to explore how we create intra –actions between different realities and materialities and how social and technology can be re-tangled and create novel agency.

The cross- boundary in experimenting with methods that intertwine and challenge the perception of possible combinations, constraints and intimacy; to give visibility to new knowledge production and methods, becomes absolutely crucial in my research.

I want to explore how polyphonic experiences; bodies and radically different perspectives can create new knowledge in a physical location.

Places and spaces in our society are clearly marked by gender, ethnicity, power and norms, affects us all residing there. Through intra-action with multiple agencies (people, spaces, materiality’s), different spatialities can be reinvented and therefor “games could be perceived as a social technology” (Flanagan, 2009) to accomplish this.

Entangling technocultures : feminist technoscience, participation and social change
Linda Paxling – PhD project

See Design for Digital Media projects.

Complexity and Depth in Contemporary Media
Peter Giger, PhD, R&D project

See Design for Digital Media projects.

The cultivated city. Urban gardening as a posthumanist expression.
Birgitta Rydhagen, PhD, Ass. professor and Pirjo Elovaara, PhD, Ass. professor, R&D project

By using the concept cultivation we stress the simultaneous ecological and social/learning processes. The project is built on two cases of urban gardening; Adult education courses connected to the Transition movement, and neighbourhood allotments for socially vulnerable persons. Based in feminist technoscience and digital humanism, the project poses questions on formation of identity and citizenship in gardening, ecological adaptation connected to gardening, and how digital tools (websites with instructions as well as smart artefacts) connect with the gardening practices. Participation in gardening, digital documentation, interviews and workshops will contribute to a collective knowledge production between gardeners and researchers. During 2015, short courses in gardening were initiated. The project is connected to the international program The Seed Box, Linköping University .

Epistemological Issues in Computer Science Education from Gender Research Perspectives
Christina Björkman, PhD, research, quiescent

This is a project with university teachers in computer science at a Swedish university. The focus of the project is gender, knowledge and learning in computer science, and the project aims to deepen the teacher’s knowledge and experience in these areas in order to develop their teaching.

In the longer perspective, this concerns how to make computer science more interesting to a larger group of people than is the case today. This can be accomplished by, for example, discussing issues such as what computer is, and how it is presented, and to learn to respect and accommodate greater diversity among students and their backgrounds, interests, motives and understandings.

Theoretical Frameworks for ProduSer Oriented Design for Digital Media
Peter Ekdahl, PhD, R & D project

See Design for Digital Media projects.

Exploring æffect in media practises
Linus de Petris, PhD project

See Design for Digital Media projects.

Feminist TechnoScience and a Shared Fragile Future – challenging the epistemological infrastructure in technology
Lena Trojer, PhD, Professor, R&D project

The research, which is mainly practice driven in developing countries, brings forward discussions on how we, as researchers in technoscience, are deeply involved in technological transformation processes through our knowledge production. The focus is turned towards the knowledge production itself and the university as partner in distributed research processes.

The contemporary situation is understood as circumstances, where the boundaries between universities, industry, public sector and other kind of institutions, organisations and authorities are exceedingly hazy concerning knowledge production and evolving into complex co-evolving processes. The discussion is kept to the role and accountability and responsibility of the actors at the universities. There is an emphasis on the need for self-reflection / diffraction in technological transformation processes as far as scientists are concerned. The ontoepistemological base for this research is found in feminist technoscience.

Results of this continuing research activities found ways and were exposed during the year in training courses for media technology students, in presentations at universities in Sweden and in Rwanda as well as in  a book, a project report and papers jointly published with colleagues.

 

ICT for Development

Understanding energy systems as innovation systems.
Understanding the role of the university in the national innovation system.
Tomas Kjellqvist, PhD, R&D&I project

Inspired by work done in the project Solar power to the people I started research with the aim to understand energy systems as innovation systems. The main finding from the previous project was that implementation of solar technology in the productive sector in African countries was due to the absence of an innovation system in the energy sector. The project had also identified that the innovation system on renewable energy sources was only emerging in Sweden. Thus it had been very difficult to identify possible partnerships for collaboration between Swedish companies and companies in East Africa.

I set out to design a research program on how energy systems could be understood with the concepts derived from theories on innovation. To make the connection I realized that I had to go to the roots of Systems theory and to understand the evolution of energy systems I needed to get a better grip on theories on evolutionary economics. As the transition to renewable energy requires solutions for a decentralized energy production in distributed systems I also needed to integrate methods dating back to the quantitative revolution in economic geography back in the 1960´s. The work on tying these different perspectives together is ongoing. The latest application of the perspective was to produce a concept note for the application of renewable energy in the Health sector in Mozambique., a project that we hope to start in late 2016.

As a part of my activities with the Swedish National Commission for Unesco, I wrote a small paper on the international dimension of Integrated Science. This paper was based on findings from my thesis work in 2012. This work has continued in 2015 by producing inputs to the Nordic preparations for the Unesco General Conference in November 2015. This new paper analyses the sustainable development goals and the Agenda 2030 and the implications for Unesco and its member countries as a partner in the implementation of the Agenda. One concrete example of this work is the production of inputs to the Unesco Biosphere program:

Setting up an international network for research on biosphere areas, in line with the new strategy for the Unesco Man and Biosphere program 2015-2025.
Initialization of the work on a research strategy for the Blekinge Arkipelag biosphere program
Initialization of the work on a national research strategy for the Swedish Man and Biosphere program
Research connected to Social Innovations and Social Enterprise within the Man and Biosphere program.

Business Incubation Systems as an integral development strategy for industrialization of Uganda
Joshua Mutambi, PhD, postdoc.

The main objective of the postdoctoral study is to investigate the level of collaboration and incubation practices of institutions, agencies and university programs to promote technology transfer, business start-ups and influencing sustainable business models. All this is in the context of emerging innovation systems and improving competitiveness. This is envisaged to inform the respective incubation institutions and policy processes and help in particular formulating relevant strategies and prospects of advancement (in terms of upgrading incubation environment and increased productivity regarding business development and competitiveness in Uganda) and growth of sustainable businesses.

Unlocking the Binding Constraints in Uganda’s Innovation System
Julius Ecuru, PhD, postdoc

The post-doctoral work will continue exploring innovation systems in the development context in Uganda and east Africa. Many policy makers and politicians recognize how the potential role of science, technology and innovation could play in the economic development and wellbeing of their societies. However, the rhetoric is not adequately matched with allocation of resources to STI, and development of enabling policies. Uganda, for example does not have a clear policy for financing innovation, and struggles to find ways of promoting innovations and competitiveness in the country. The post-doctoral work, therefore, aims at assisting policy makers understand the dynamics of innovation systems, and hence assist them develop innovation policies that are responsive to the demands of growth and competitiveness.

Formation of clusters focusing generation of a co-evolution context of university and industry in Cochabamba region, Bolivia
Carlos Acevedo, PhD project

Main objective is to develop knowledge about Innovation Systems and clustering processes focusing on the generation of a co-evolution based context between the university-industry-government .

Specific objectives are to:
a) analyse national policies created to strengthen the National Innovation System.
b) analyse the SME cluster development taken place in the region of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
c) determine success mechanisms to make the innovation processes more dynamic in the co-evolution context between the university, firms and government.

Innovation processes within Bolivian cluster initiatives.
Wendy Sanzetenea, PhD project

The main objective is focused on analysing innovative processes within Bolivia cluster initiatives.

The specific objectives are formulated as follows:
– To study the existing cluster initiatives and the innovative processes generated.
– To analyse the role of the public university, its interactions with the government and productive sector in the cluster initiatives and also, other mechanism of knowledge creation to generate innovative processes.
– To analyse specific characteristics of development initiatives taken place in Bolivia.

Co-evolving Practices in Innovation System processes in East Africa and Bolivia.
Lena Trojer, PhD, Professor, R&D projects