Introduction to Feminist Technoscience Studies

The course is an interdisciplinary introductory course aimed at identifying, analysing, and addressing current challenges in hyper-digitalised knowledge societies. The course begins by providing an overview of the epistemological approaches and theories in feminist technoscience studies, which involve technology, science, environmental issues, and economics as objects of gender research. The course then gives examples of how knowledge and technologies are historically situated, socio-culturally mediated, linguistically and economically shaped, and thus always embedded in power relations. The concept of intersectionality is used in the course as a tool to help students identify and analyse the interplay between these power relations. The course concludes with discussions of empirical examples and demonstrates how the theoretical and methodological framework of feminist technoscience studies (Feminist STS) can be used to analyse various socio-economic, cultural, political, and technological phenomena. The course provides both theoretical insights and practical tools for students from different disciplinary backgrounds. Students will acquire analytical skills to examine the intersections of social inequalities, politics, historical processes, design, and digital practices by investigating how gender, race, class, sexuality, and age interact with issues of science and technology.