ITAS welcomes guest researcher from the U.S.

Erik Fisher is dedicated to improve the social dimensions of science and technology. The professor from the Arizona State University (ASU) visits Karlsruhe to strengthen ties between TA and his Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) approach.
Erik Fisher
Erik Fisher

The associate professor from ASU´s School for the Future of Innovation in Society is spending the fall 2018 semester in Karlsruhe. At ITAS, which he visited first in 2007, Erik Fisher is leading a series of introductory workshops on the Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) approach. STIR promotes intervention-oriented research in order to exercise, build, and assess capacities for reflexivity and responsiveness among scientists, engineers, and other technical experts.

By collaborating on several projects and participating in various workshops – one organized by the head of ITAS Armin Grunwald on the Theory of TA and another organized by Alexandra Hausstein (ITZ) on Socio-Technical Integration – Fisher wants to develop the conceptual and practical relationships between TA, STIR and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Therefore, he will also give a keynote lecture at the eighth international conference of the Network TA (NTA) taking place in Karlsruhe in November.

At Arizona State University Fisher directs the STIR Cities project, which studies and compares diverse organizations in Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon working on smart grid technologies. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, the project develops the notion of local and regional sociotechnical imaginaries and brings social science engagement out of the laboratory and into the (smart) city. Fisher is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Responsible Innovation. Formerly, he served as director of the STIR project and of a PhD program in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, as well as associate director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU. (26.10.2018)

Further information: