RESUM DE LA CONFERÈNCIA

’Sisterhood, EU Funding and Networked Research: a virtual ethnography of the making of the Athena Thematic Network in Women's Studies’

Networks have been important in the sciences and the humanities since the modern period. With the growing presence of the internet (‘a network of networks’) this form of social organization is largely associated with technologies such as the web. This presentation considers whether the web is becoming part of networking practices of researchers and seeks to understand how networking practices may be changing. To explore these practices, I have been using both traditional ethnographic approaches (interviews, observation) as well as drawing on more formal approaches that focus on traces of web activity, such as the analysis of hyperlink networks. The motivation, insights and frustrations of combining such approaches, often labeled qualitative and quantitative, will be addressed and illustrated using fieldwork currently underway in the field of women’s studies.

BREU REFERÈNCIA ACADÈMICA-BIOGRÀFICA

Dra. Anne Beaulieu
Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Programme Leader The Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Science, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences(NL)

Doctora en Dinàmica de la Ciència i la Tecnologia per la Universitat d’Ámsterdam, és llicenciada en Humanitats i máster en Comunicació per la McGill University (Canadà). Actualment investiga la interacció entre les noves tecnologies i les pràctiques de recerca científica utilitzant la metodologia etnogràfica. Ha escrit sobre imatges biomèdiques digitals i tecnologies de bases de dades, temes de compartimientació de dades i bioinformàtica com una nova infraestructura per a la economia del coneixement. En el Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS)desenvolupa també diferents aproximacions metodològiques i participa en l’assoliment dels dos objectius principals del VKS: estudiar e intervenir en la investigació en ciències socials i humanes. Entre les seves publicacions destaquem “Mediating Ethnography: the Internet, situated knowledge and objectivity in anthropology Social Epistemology” (2004), “Sociable Hyperlinks: an ethnographic approach to connectivity” (2006) i “Textured Connectivity: an ethnographic approach to understanding the timescape of hyperlinks” (2007).