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- Bjare, Ulrika, 1978-
(författare)
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Vetenskapens självstyre - styrning, organisation och genomförande av universitetsforskning
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis deals with a tension in university governance concerning research policy actors’ mandate to decide on the academic organization and direction of research, vis-à-vis researchers’ perceptions of governance in research. This tension is addressed through an analysis of the ideas and attitudes towards universities as institutions, and research as a practice, expressed at the policy level in connection with major reforms. Additionally, it is studied how individual researchers perceive and relate to governance in research in relation to the governance system as a whole and to the university management. The study makes use of different theories and methods, including the idea of the social contract for science and perspectives from implementation and policy studies as well as enactment-perspectives and theories of metagovernance. Using a document analysis of policy documents the study demonstrates that significance has been attributed to the internal university organization by policy makers. The analysis demonstrates that policy perspectives on the internal organization of universities have been shaped by ambivalent attitudes aimed at controlling academic activities, while simultaneously adhering to norms of scientific autonomy. Through quantitative analysis the study further demonstrates a correlation between researchers' perceptions of steering in research and the internal management model of universities. Researchers at universities with a high degree of line-management perceive a higher degree of influence in research from the internal university management compared with researchers at universities with low degree of line-management. One explanation suggested is that an organization with line-management and few collegial bodies makes universities less resilient to external influence. Also, line-managed universities have a more instrumental character where external factors could have a greater impact on the internal leadership. The quantitative study also shows that researchers perceive a high degree of influence in their research through external funding. This result is consistent with previous research that has demonstrated the impact of external funding on the direction of research. Similar to the survey, the thesis’s interview study shows that governance through external funding is perceived as the most potent. Consequently, the most distinct adaptation to governance is through adjustments in research applications. These adjustments involve innovative processes and the ability to transform external funders' priorities into research proposals. In this process, prospective scenarios are created, where research aligns with both the scientific field's development and society's utility paradigm. The design of the research system means that a large part of the mandate to plan, administer, develop and negotiate forms for conducting research rests with individual researchers.
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- Cakici, Baki, 1984-
(författare)
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The Informed Gaze : On the Implications of ICT-Based Surveillance
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Information and communication technologies are not value-neutral. I examine two domains, public health surveillance and sustainability, in five papers covering: (i) the design and development of a software package for computer-assisted outbreak detection; (ii) a workflow for using simulation models to provide policy advice and a list of challenges for its practice; (iii) an analysis of design documents from three smart home projects presenting intersecting visions of sustainability; (iv) an analysis of EU-financed projects dealing with sustainability and ICT; (v) an analysis of the consequences of design choices when creating surveillance technologies. My contributions include three empirical studies of surveillance discourses where I identify the forms of action that are privileged and the values that are embedded into them. In these discourses, the presence of ICT entails increased surveillance, privileging technological expertise, and prioritising centralised forms of knowledge.
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- Gärdebo, Johan, 1986-
(författare)
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Environing Technology : Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment 1969–2001
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The state-owned Swedish Space Corporation established a satellite remote sensing infrastructure and defined uses for the technology both within and beyond Sweden during the latter part of the twentieth century. This thesis studies Swedish satellite remote sensing as an environing technology – a technology that environs, that produces environments and our perceptions of the environment. This perspective is important in historicising Sweden’s role in developing a technology that now is used both to manage environments on a global scale and to provide an understanding of what the environment is. It is also important to understand these environing activities as motivated by and related to other aims, for example Swedish non-alignment, development aid, and the export of expertise to new markets. I ask two questions. Firstly, how did Swedish satellite remote sensing activities contribute to the making of environment? Secondly, why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these activities?Studying environing technologies requires combining the theoretical understandings of history of technology and environmental history and treats technology and environment as outcomes of environing activities. Methodologically, the thesis studies written and oral sources to find activities related to satellite remote sensing that take part in sensing, writing about, or shaping environments. From these activities, new understandings of technology and environment emerge over time.The thesis is structured around five empirical chapters: 1) the institutionalisation of remote sensing as part of environmental diplomacy in Sweden, 1969–1978; 2) the establishment and expansion of a French-Swedish remote sensing infrastructure, showcased by sensing the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986; 3) the export of Swedish technoscientific expertise as a form of development aid, 1983–1994; 4) the promotion of satellites as a tool for sustainable development, 1987–1993; and 5) the establishment of an environmental data centre to monitor the European environment as part of managing the expansion of the European Union, 1991–1999.Swedish satellite remote sensing experts contributed to numerous international demonstrations that emphasised the technology as a tool for sustainable development of environments on a global scale. These activities beyond Sweden, often through transnational collaborations, were undertaken to establish satellite remote sensing within Sweden. The lack of a long-term strategy for the Swedish government’s space activities forced the technoscientific experts to find ad hoc uses for their technology, of which environmental applications were the most significant.
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- Ingemansson, Malena
(författare)
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Success as Science but Burden for Business? : On the difficult relationship between scientific advancement and innovation
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Today, a general policy and investment recipe for economic growth and innovation, on both a national and an international level, is to base commercial ventures on novel scientific solutions. From this perspective, scientific research is seen as an untapped source of innovation, and the ambition is to make new scientific knowledge more easily transferable to business settings, where it is supposed to generate direct economic benefits. Since the instigation of the Human Genome Organisation Project in 1990, which set out to map the entire genetic composition of the average human being, great expectations have been put on biotechnology, and it has been viewed as the new gold mine for both scientific and business advancement. Through research it is expected to deliver new scientific knowledge primarily about previously untreatable illnesses and, as an industry, it is expected to produce new technical solutions realising this knowledge. This expectation has directed large amounts of investment capital to biotechnology in the pursuit of capitalising on new scientific discoveries through their commercialisation. This investigation is an empirically based process study of one such innovation process. With a network approach, focusing particularly on resource combinations, this study aims to create a better understanding of what is involved in trying to achieve innovation based on new scientific solutions. The specific case of the commercialisation of pyrosequencing, a new method for the analysis of genetic material, demonstrates the difficulty of making a scientific breakthrough into a useful business resource. The innovation process is investigated from several perspectives. By looking at the development of something new, at its large-scale production, and widespread use, this study shows how these aspects represent vastly different economic logics. It also demonstrates how great a challenge it can be for these to function together in the attempt of achieving successful innovation.
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- Paglia, Eric, 1979-
(författare)
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The Northward Course of the Anthropocene : Transformation, Temporality and Telecoupling in a Time of Environmental Crisis
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Arctic—warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet—is a source of striking imagery of amplified environmental change in our time, and has come to serve as a spatial setting for climate crisis discourse. The recent alterations in the Arctic environment have also been perceived by some observers as an opportunity to expand economic exploitation. Heightened geopolitical interest in the region and its resources, contradicted by calls for the protection of fragile Far North ecosystems, has rendered the Arctic an arena for negotiating human interactions with nature, and for reflecting upon the planetary risks and possibilities associated with the advent and expansion of the Anthropocene—the proposed new epoch in Earth history in which humankind is said to have gained geological agency and become the dominant force over the Earth system. With the Arctic serving as a nexus of crosscutting analytical themes spanning contemporary history (the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century until 2015), this dissertation examines defining characteristics of the Anthropocene and how the concept, which emerged from the Earth system science community, impacts ideas and assumptions in historiography, social sciences and the environmental humanities, including the fields of environmental history, crisis management and security studies, political geography, and science and technology studies (STS). The primary areas of empirical analysis and theoretical investigation encompass constructivist perspectives and temporal conceptions of environmental and climate crisis; the role of science and expertise in performing politics and shaping social discourse; the geopolitical significance of telecoupling—a concept that reflects the interconnectedness of the Anthropocene and supports stakeholder claims across wide spatial scales; and implications of the recent transformation in humankind’s long duration relationship with the natural world. Several dissertation themes were observed in practice at the international science community of Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard, where global change is made visible through a concentration of scientific activity. Ny-Ålesund is furthermore a place of geopolitics, where extra-regional states attempt to enhance their legitimacy as Arctic stakeholders through the performance of scientific research undertakings, participation in governance institutions, and by establishing a physical presence in the Far North. This dissertation concludes that this small and remote community represents an Anthropocene node of global environmental change, Earth system science, emergent global governance, geopolitics, and stakeholder construction in an increasingly telecoupled world.
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- Benner, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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Fel av utredningen att främst fokusera på kommersialisering
- 2021
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Ingår i: Universitetsläraren. - : Universitetsläraren. - 0282-4973.
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Utredningen om ett utvecklat innovationsstöd vid lärosätena riktar tydligt in sig på kommersialisering för industriell utveckling. Men nyttiggörande av forskning är ett bredare begrepp, skriver nio forskare vid den Vinnovafinansierade forskningsplattformen Making Universities Matter.
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- Eriksson, Elina, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Exceptionalism and Evasion : How Scholars Reason About Air Travel
- 2022
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Ingår i: Academic Flying and the Means of Communication. - Singapore : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9789811649103 ; , s. 159-183
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding how scholars reason about their own flying habits is important when dealing with the problems of large emissions from academic air travel. This study is based on a travel habits survey with scholars at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. KTH has relatively high emissions from air travel, but at the same time, it has a high profile in matters of sustainability and a lot of research related to this theme. One can therefore assume a high degree of knowledge about the climate crisis and the climate impact of various actions. It is also plausible that KTH scholars meet special expectations to be role models and that practices in conflict with their teaching can have consequences for the public confidence in the university. In this study, we look at how scholars reason about how emissions from their flying could be reduced. Their responses display a spectrum of varying attitudes, from climate scepticism to a commitment to radical transformation, with the majority in between, either suggesting different types of concrete changes or invoking arguments to justify the status quo. The proposed interventions, several of which are ingenious and wise, can guide university managements to strategies that have support from employees. The more reluctant arguments point to cultural and discursive habits that must be understood and met in an empathetic way.
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