The type of work I am doing is part of an international field of research that has emerged over the past decades as a result of increasing social controversies over new technologies. There is no single discipline, question, method, theory, paradigm nor uniform institutional infrastructure that constitutes this field. Its dynamics are driven by the emergence of new technologies and science-related social problems and the need for expertise and reflection in situations of rapid social change and scientific ambiguity. As these processes are not confined to single states and countries but of international, sometimes even global scope most of my studies go beyond single countries to compare several countries or analyze trans- and supranational discurses, structures and processes. In spite of the field’s problem orientation much of my work is curiosity-driven. Probably the most unusual thing about me is that I work as a  freelancer.

I would love to say that I am independent (and falsely sometimes do). But of course I am not. I depend on research grants, the fairness and liberality of funding institutions, the grace of my anonymous peer reviewers and, just as any of my colleagues, I have to play by academia’s rules: I design project proposals, apply for funds, monitor current developments for promising research questions, attend conferences, seek cooperation, work as good as I can to produce acceptable and relevant knowledge etc. Except that I’m doing this without institutional support or position.

One idea I sometimes flirt with regarding how science should be communicated to a broader public – a recurrent debate in my research field – is that scientists should be as frank, authentic, or honest as possible when their narration comes to themselves; they should present themselves as individuals, as actors and subjects in science and society, as holders of particular positions in the scientific field – a field that is structured by power relations and struggles for status, influence, control, and intellectual autonomy.

Now, I know that this is utopian and must sound terribly naïve, and I certainly won’t try it here. Instead, I keep it simple and add only a few minor explanations to what largely remains a conventional academic CV. Yet, I still find the idea interesting – you might see it as a utopian thought experiment – and therefore leave it here. Why is it impossible? What would be the consequences if tried out? And what is the appropriate approach of a scholar who critically engages with controversies over science, technology?

I studied Evolutionary and Cultural Anthropology as well as Psychology at the University Vienna. Besides the science part, I would like to stress various trips to Southeast Asia I undertook as a student as part of self-designed projects on indigenous rights and socio-ecological conflicts. I learned a lot on these trips and they triggered a fascination with the role of States and politics in social movements and conflicts over minority rights and nature.

I graduated in 1993 with an empirical research-project in intercultural Behavioral Science (under the supervision of Wolfgang Schleidt) after which, of course, I did not find a job nor any realistic way to pursue the kind of research I would have liked to do.

Out of pure coincidence I got involved in various research projects on biotechnology regulation at the ITA, the Technology Assessment Unit of the Austrian Academy of Science.

From 1995 to 1997 I passed through the post-graduate program in Political Science at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Vienna (IHS), worked as an freelance journalist and got my first own papers published. The are dealing with semi-democracies in South-East Asia and the idea of human nature in public discourse.

In summer 1996, I passed a post-graduate program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Laxenburg and, through IIASA’s formidable library, took a first dive into the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

At the same time the circumstances and subject of my work markedly changed. GMOs became highly controversial in Austria and my project-based work as academic laborer at the ITA – research on regulation and public opinion –  turned out to be both politically relevant and perfectly situated to develop an in-depth understanding of a social movement. Various projects I was involved in were EU funded and offered a European perspective, which made research even more interesting. I co-authored number of empirical papers with reference to Austria’s GMO debate addressing regulation; public opinion; public controversy and the social psychology of collectively dealing with new technological objects.

From 1998 to 2000, I was employed at the ITA and developed my own holistic perspective on the GMO controversy, integrating quantitative and qualitative data on public opinion, mass media, regulatory and policy processes both at national and supranational levels. As the contract was ended I began to run independent projects.

In 2001, I defended my dissertation (with honours) at the University of Salzburg. (Hans-Jörg Rheinberger was one of my doctoral advisers.) The book I derived from my dissertation still is, I think, the most detailed and comprehensive account of Austria’s GMO-controversy.

In 2002, I had a research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS) Graz.

From 2003 to 2006, I directed the project The Austrian Biotechnology Conflict in the World funded by the Austrian Science Fund. Research trips brought me to Brussels, France, the U.S., and Japan. From 2005 to 2006, I worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Biodiplomacy Initiative of the United Nations University – Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) Yokohama/Japan.

I understood that the GMO controversy’s global scope and complexity constituted a unique occasion to study a multitude of socio-political processes in a number of countries and supranational entities. I published papers on democracy, consensus conferences, multi-level politics in the EU, the synchronization of national mass publics in the EU polity, and distinct national movements.

From 2009 – 2013, I led the project Transnational movements beyond the state? supported by the Austrian Science Fund. The project’s focus was on anti-GMO movements’ national and transnational dimensions. I conducted field research among radical anti-GMO activists in France, Germany, Spain and the UK and set up a comprehensive, multi-national quantitative data base on anti-GMO protest events over twenty years. I published studies on trans-border radical activism, national specificities in movements and movement Europeanization.

During these years I got involved in a policy field that struck me for the remarkable appeal it had for my colleagues: nanotechnology. Research on nanotechnology’s social and ethical implications was booming. On the one hand, the reasons were obvious: at the time funds for this kind of research had become abundant, and research funds attract researchers, social researchers and all others alike. The funding boom, in turn, resulted from the high salience nanotechnology momentarily enjoyed among technological decision makers, and this shift of attention was a transnational phenomenon. This explained that even in a small country like Austria where nanotechnological innovation is not particularly significant generous funding for socio-ethical research and governance was made available.

On the other hand, it was less clear why and exactly how this happened. There seemed to be a generalized concern among technologists and policy makers that nanotechnology was in danger of falling prey to a public backlash similar to biotechnology, and this concern was driving investment in a socio-ethical research field that was expected to deliver intelligence and strategy for preventing opposition. However, as someone who was well acquainted with anti-technology movements, I could not make out this resistance movement. In fact, the public hardly took any notice of the technology.

I was intrigued by the discursive construction of a transnational policy field which – based on questionable assumptions – mobilized the social sciences to an unprecedented extent. In the project The deliberative turn in the nanotechnology policy field supported by the Austrian Science Fund I set out to understand why and how this transnational policy wave had come about and why ethically ambitious governance concepts such as democratic deliberation had become so salient. In the course of work on this project I started to focus more and more on the role of the social sciences in the context of this policy wave which brought me to my current book project.