This is a call for applications for two fellowships (three months, May – June 2019; monthly grant of € 1,500) at our graduate school ‘Innovation Society Today’ at Technische Universität Berlin. The CfA can be found here: https://www.innovation.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/i62_ifsgktypo3/Visiting_Fellows_2019_Graduiertenkolleg.pdf
The program is affiliated to the department of sociology, but applications from political science, history, philosophy, economics, STS and other fields that deal with innovation in society are encouraged.
Deadline for applications: 20th February, 2019.
By following an extended notion of innovation, the graduate school strives to develop a sophisticated sociological view on innovation, which is more encompassing than conventional economic perspectives. Our doctoral students are currently undertaking a series of case studies to promote a deeper and empirically founded understanding of the meaning of innovation in contemporary society and of the social processes it involves. The Graduate School addresses the following key question: How does the innovation society constitute its transformations reflexively as innovation? In order to answer this question we need to clarify how innovation and novelty are brought forth reflexively by a multitude of actors distributed in and across innovation fields, i.e. action fields which are constituted around specific, innovation-related issues (like e-mobility or bank-regulation) by actors interacting with each other referring to the issue of the field. Such innovation fields often are located between different areas of society (e.g. between science, industry, and the public realm). In the process of societal transformation, innovation becomes an increasingly reflexive, heterogeneously distributed, and ubiquitous phenomenon. Reflexivity in innovation relates to the ongoing and systematic production and reproduction of novelty in society based on a growing body of knowledge. Heterogeneously distributed innovation signals a shift from the individual entrepreneur to innovation produced in actor networks. Ubiquity of innovation signifies that novelty is no longer restricted to the traditional spheres of science and economy; rather, it has become a generalized imperative in modern society (innovation society).
In case you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the graduate school’s academic coordinator, Dominika Hadrysiewicz.