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Course program: Spring 2026

14. April: Introduction and Philosophy and Research Ethics I

0915-1100 Thomas Berker: Welcome, about the course, structure, course assignment, and we get to know each other (a little)

1115-1200 Jonathan Knowles: Philosophy of Science: Objectivity, Method, and Truth (slides)

This session introduces the classical issues of the philosophy of science, framed through the lens of the nature and possibility of objectivity in research.

Essential readings:

  • Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 1. (available here)
  • Knowles, Jonathan: Theory of science: A Short Introduction: ‘Logical Positivism’ (p. 21-30). (here)
  • Popper, Karl. 1972. The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge. Appendix to Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (here)
  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 2012. Postscript - 1969. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 173-208. Fourth edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (here)
  • H.G. Gadamer 'The universality of the hermeneutical problem' in his Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. D. Linge, California UP 1976. (here)
  • E. Anderson ‘Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity’ Philosophical topics, 23(2), 27-58, 1995.(here)

Additional readings:

  • Jonathan Knowles, Theory of science: A Short Introduction: Ch. 4: Further Developments in Philosophy of Science: Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.
  • M. Foucault 'The Discourse on Language' Appendix to The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York, Pantheon Books 1972, https://commons.princeton.edu/shakespeares-language/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2017/09/Foucault-The-Discourse-on-Language.pdf (and here)
  • S Harding '"Strong objectivity" and socially situated knowledge' Chapter 6 of her Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Cornell UP 1991. (here)
  • R. Rorty: “Solidarity or objectivity?”, in R. Talisse & S. Aikin The Pragmatism Reader (Princeton UP 2011), 367-380. (here)

1200-1300 Lunch

1300-1500 Jonathan Knowles continues

15. April: Philosophy and Research Ethics II

0915-1200: Rune Nydal: Research Ethics: How and why are norms morally binding? & What makes a social theory right?

Essential readings:

  • Taylor, Charles. 1983. Social Theory as Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. (available here)
  • Kalleberg, Ragnvald 2007. A Reconstruction of the Ethos of Science. Journal of classical sociology 7(2) 137-160. (here)
  • Ruyter, K.W. (2019) The history of research ethics. (here).

Additional reading:

  • The NESH guidelines, available in both Norwegian and English
  • Hallvard Fossheim, Helene Ingierd 2016 (eds): Internet Research ethics Cappelen Damm (open access)
  • The research ethics library. A resource from the Norwegian National research ethics committees. (here)
  • Schuyt, K. (2019) Scientific integrity. The rules of academic research. Translated by Kristen Gehrman. Leiden University Press. Chapter 1&2 (here)

1200-1300: Lunch

1300-1500: NN: Ontological and epistemological orientations

This session seeks to give an introduction to what in theses is sometimes called "the epistemological and ontological approach of the research"

  • The construction of what?
  • Of essences and relations
  • Why are ontologies sometimes flat, what happens when we move beyond the human and what is new about new materialisms?
  • What is a turn (linguistic, cultural, spatial, ontological, affective, ontological, infrastructural, material, posthuman, practice,...) and is there a turn towards turn fatigue?

Readings:

  • Hacking, Ian. 2000. The Social Construction of What. Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London. pp. 36-62 (here)
  • Browse the Feral Atlas as an example for more-than human perspectives: https://feralatlas.supdigital.org/

20 April: Science in context I

0915-1200 Terje Finstad: History of science and changes in scientific life. Situating and exploring the history of your own discipline/subject. (slides)

Essential reading:

  • William Clark. 2008. Academic charisma and the origins of the research university. University of Chicago Press, p. 183-238 (chapter 6: The doctor of philosophy). (here)

Additional readings:

  • Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. 1992. The image of objectivity. In: Representations 40, p. 81-128 (here)
  • Steven Shapin. 2010. Never pure. Historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority. The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 1-15. (here)

1200-1300 Lunch

Please not that for the rest of the day we move to room D131

1300-1500 Thomas Berker: Trial and error in science, lecture and group work (slides)

Reading:

Latour, Bruno (1983) Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world. In: Latour, Bruno, Knorr-Cetina Karin, Mulkay MJ (eds.) Science observed. Perspectives on the social study of science. Sage: London: 141-170. Online: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/12-GIVE-ME-A-LAB-GB.pdf

21 April: Science in context II

0915-1100 Kyriaki Papageorgiou: The university as a place and a context for research: Academic freedom and autonomy, the quest for excellence, and strained collegiality. (slides)

Reading:

Knut H. Sørensen and Sharon Traweek: Questing Excellence in Academia: A Tale of Two Universities (Routledge 2022). Chapter 3. In the Shadows of Excellence and Neoliberal Interventions: Enactments of Academic Autonomy and Strained Collegiality (33 p.) The whole book is available here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780367259334

1115-1200 NN: How to "succeed" in science

1200-1300 Lunch

1300-1500 Govert Valkenburg: Science as practice (slides)

Essential readings:

  • H.M. Collins and Steven Yearly (1992). Epistemological Chicken, pp. 301-326 in Andrew Pickering (ed.): Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (here)
  • Michel Callon and Bruno Latour (1992). Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath School! A reply to Collins and Yearley, pp. 343-368 in Andrew Pickering (ed.): Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (here)
  • Noortje Marres (2018). Why We Can't Have Our Facts Back. Engaging Science, Technology and Society, vol. 4, 2018. (here)

04 May: Critical perspectives I

0915-1000 Thomas Berker: Introduction to days 5+6

1015-1200 Sofia Moratti: Situated knowledge and feminist critiques of universality in science (slides)

In this session, we will revisit the concept of “objectivity” through feminist critiques of the idea of universality in science. We will discuss the relevance and significance of acknowledging researcher positionalities.

Essential readings:

  • Rolin, K. "Situated knowledge and objectivity." In The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science, pp. 216-224. Routledge, 2020. (here)
  • Ashton, N. A., & McKenna, R. (2020). Situating feminist epistemology. Episteme, 17(1), 28-47. (here)
  • Olmos-Vega, Francisco M., Renée E. Stalmeijer, Lara Varpio, and Renate Kahlke. "A practical guide to reflexivity in qualitative research: AMEE Guide No. 149." Medical teacher 45, no. 3 (2023): 241-251. (here)

Additional reading:

  • Collins, Patricia Hill 1986. Learning from the outsider within: the sociological significance of black feminist thought i Social Problems 33(6): 14-32 (here)
  • Haraway, Donna 1988. ”Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575-599 (24 s) (here)
  • Harding, Sandra, 2001 “Feminist Standpoint Epistemology” in Lederman, M. & Bartsch, i The Gender and Science Reader, London: Routledge: 145-165 (here)

1200-1300 Lunch

1300-1500 Astrid Rasch: Decolonising academia (slides)

In this session, we will explore the historical entanglement of science and colonialism and consider the enduring legacies of this entanglement. We will discuss whether and how these considerations affect our own research practice.

Essential readings:

  • Gopal, Priyamvada. 2021. ‘On Decolonisation and the University’. Textual Practice 35 (6): 873–99. (here)
  • Mott, Carrie, and Daniel Cockayne. 2017. ‘Citation Matters: Mobilizing the Politics of Citation toward a Practice of “Conscientious Engagement”’. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 24 (7): 954–73. (here)
  • Murrey, A., & Daley, P. 2023. 'Introduction: Learning Disobedience from the Heart of Empire'. In Learning Disobedience: Decolonizing Development Studies, London: Pluto Press, pp. 9-28. (here)

Additional readings:

  • Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. 2021. ‘The Cognitive Empire, Politics of Knowledge and African Intellectual Productions: Reflections on Struggles for Epistemic Freedom and Resurgence of Decolonisation in the Twenty-First Century’. Third World Quarterly 42 (5): 882–901. (here)

05 May: Critical perspectives II

0915-1100 Elisabeth Stubberud: Decolonizing knowledge production and objectivity (slides)

Essential readings:

  • Fjellheim, Eva Maria (2020) 'Through our stories we resist', https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780367853785-12/stories-resist-eva-maria-fjellheim
  • Kuokkanen, Rauna (2008) ‘What is hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift’ in Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies vol. 30(1), pp. 60-82. (here)
  • SAIH: An introduction to decolonization https://saih.no/assets/docs/Avkolonisering/Avkolonisering-ENG.pdf
  • Bhambra, Gurminder K. (2014) ‘Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues’ in Postcolonial Studies Vol. 17(2), pp. 115-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966414

Additional reading:

  • Dankertsen, Astrid (2022) ' Avkolonisering av akademia fra et samisk perspektiv' (here)

1115-1200 Thomas Berker: The many uses of science: interdisciplinarity, innovation and sustainability

Essential reading:

  • Pfotenhauer, Sebastian M., Joakim Juhl, and Erik Aarden. “Challenging the ‘Deficit Model’ of Innovation: Framing Policy Issues under the Innovation Imperative.” Research Policy, New Frontiers in Science, Technology and Innovation Research from SPRU’s 50th Anniversary Conference, 48, no. 4 (May 1, 2019): 895–904. (here)

Additional reading:

  • Berker, Thomas. “Negotiating research norms between academic and industrial research. The case of a research centre on zero emission buildings in Norway”, to be published in Nordic Architectural Research. (here)

1200-1300 Lunch

1300-1500 Thomas Berker: cont.d