Visitors

LuĂ­sa Reis-Castro


ETHOS Lab remote resident
Luísa Reis-Castro had been planning to visit in the autumn of 2020, but instead we have converted her stay into a Remote Residency. Luisa, a PhD candidate in the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States, will be “remotely resident” with us for the month of February. Luisa’s dissertation is focused on new technologies for controlling mosquito-borne diseases, as a window into the politics of science, health, and the environment. Combining theoretical and methodological tools from anthropology, science and technology studies, history, and environmental humanities, her research focuses on different vector control projects being researched, tested, and implemented in Brazil, which attempt to use the Aedes aegypti mosquito as a means of controlling the pathogens it is known to transmit. During her time as an ETHOS remote resident she will work on Chapter 4 of her thesis. It investigates public health officials transforming the mosquito Aedes aegypti, vector for viruses such as Zika, dengue, and chikungunya, into indicators—or environmental sensors and sentinels—by collecting and testing these insects for viruses to identify where an outbreak could start in Foz do Iguaçu, at the Brazilian border with Argentina and Paraguay. Read more about Luisa’s project and the residency here.

Benedict Lang


ETHOS Lab intern, August 17 – December 31, 2020
Benedict is a M.A. student in Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology (RESET), offered by Munich Centre for Technology in Society (MCTS) at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. MCTS is an Integrative Research Center that is dedicated to understanding and reflexively shaping the multiple interactions between science, technology and society. Being part of MCTS, the master program RESET proposes a transdisciplinary, practice-oriented education that addresses technical and social aspects of responsibility in today’s highly technologized societies. He is working on his thesis about the perception of technology as a solution for societal issues within Hackathons. With a background in business informatics, he worked as a technical project manager for about two years with a big German media holding. You can spark his joy with discussions about municipal politics, bike lanes, housing issues, social justice, and especially digital infrastructures for citizens provided by local authorities and public institutions.

Viktoriya Feshak


ETHOS Lab intern, October 1 – December 31, 2019
Viktoriya is a M.A. student in Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology (RESET), offered by Munich Centre for Technology in Society (MCTS) at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. MCTS is an Integrative Research Center that is dedicated to understanding and reflexively shaping the multiple interactions between science, technology and society. Being part of MCTS, the master program RESET proposes a transdisciplinary, practice-oriented education that addresses technical and social aspects of responsibility in today’s highly technologized societies. Viktoriya is on her third term of the master program, where students are required to complete an internship, either in company or an STS-related institution, in order to reflect on their experience from an STS perspective, particularly with regard to questions of responsibility.

Blogposts written by Viktoriya
STS podcasts Playlist

Lotte Schack


ETHOS Lab intern, November 15 – December 15, 2019
Lotte recently graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a master’s degree in Anthropology. Her master thesis research was on unemployment and precarious work in Berlin. Here, she conducted four months of fieldwork with two anti-precarity activist groups to research the effects of neoliberal labour market reforms on the lives of un- and precariously employed. Focus of her study was on how the state plays an active role in creating precarity and how activists seek to challenge this state-sanctioned precarity. As part of the thesis, Lotte examined the ideologies of work and moral ideas of employment underpinning the unemployment system. In her internship at ETHOS Lab she will be building upon her thesis conclusions in order to investigate unemployed graduates’ experiences with the Danish unemployment system.

Sophia Knopf


ETHOS Lab Intern sokn@itu.dk
Sophia is a visiting junior researcher from TU Munich. Her ETHOS Lab project is located at the intersection of Neuroscience and AI, focusing on the Turing Test as practice that mediates between ideas of human intelligence and behaviour, and its artificial counterpart. By researching the controversy around Google Duplex as observable in the media, the project explores the test’s mythological meaning, its underlying principles and its status in light of contemporary contributions to assess artificial intelligence.