Message posted on 15/04/2021

Reminder: Don't forget about the pandemic ...

                ... and how it affects research.

Dear colleagues,

this is a reminder of the deadline (20 April) for abstracts on "Research 
in the Pandemic", a session (in English) ant the Austrian-German 
Congress of Sociology.

*Call for Abstracts*

*/Ad Hoc/**Group “**Research in the Pandemic”*

*at the Congress of the German Sociological Association and the Austrian 
Sociological Association, 23-25 August 2021 in Vienna*

**

Societal responses to the current pandemic have created two extreme 
situations for research:

- Research fields that are considered relevant to fighting the pandemic 
face strong expectations concerning timely, secure, and unambiguous 
results. Access to resources and publication opportunities have been 
eased. Many researchers have more or less radically changed their 
research by switching to pandemic-related topics.

- Research that is not relevant to fighting the pandemic experiences the 
same fate as much other work in society by being unexpectedly 
interrupted or forced to proceed under drastically changed conditions. 
Access to laboratories becomes impossible laboratory animals had to be 
culled, and infrastructures for research become inaccessible. Access to 
research objects and infrastructures outside the university (e.g. 
archives or interviewees) is not permitted, communication processes 
ceased or were moved to online formats.

In addition, we witness unpredictable disruptions of societal services 
on which time for research depends such as childcare, schooling, or 
others. First investigations show that female researchers are 
disproportionately affected by the interruptions of these services.

Both the intensification and the interruptions of research have 
consequences for research processes and academic careers that may extend 
far beyond the end of the pandemic. The /ad hoc/ – group will bring 
together sociological studies on pandemic-driven changes in research and 
explore the potential of the two extreme situations of intensification 
and interruptions for a deeper theoretical understanding of 
chronological structures and conditions of research that we took for 
granted until the pandemic hit. Topics include, but are not limited to, 
the following:

- What can analyses of attempts to speed up pandemic-relevant research 
and of interruptions of other research teach us about the dynamics of 
research and scholarly communication?

- Which dependencies on infrastructures and conditions of research that 
have been neglected by science studies are revealed by pandemic-driven 
interruptions?

- What can we learn about the impact of societal background conditions 
on the success of researchers in competitions for recognition and 
resources? How does social inequality affect researchers’ abilities to 
cope with pandemic-driven changes?

Please send your abstract (a maximum of 2,400 characters including 
spaces) by April 20^th to Jochen.Glaeser@tu-berlin.de 
.

Best wishes

Jochen Gläser

-- 
PD Dr Jochen Gläser

Prof. Dr. Jochen Gläser

Social Studies of Science and Technology

Institute of Philosophy, History of Literature, Science, and Technology

TU Berlin, HBS 7

Hardenbergstr. 16-18

10623 Berlin

Germany

* I am sending this email at a time that suits my workflow. I do not 
expect a response outside of normal working hours *
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