Ontological uncertainty in the Planetary Lab

Modern thinking and acting in the world is based on the principle of predictability and control. Unintended effects of our activities are considered as "collateral". What would change, if these effects would be made central? If the limits of our ability to predict and to control will be not an effect of what we do (not) know, but become part of reality itself? How to think the planet as a Latourian "nonmodern" laboratory, where humans are just one of the many experimenters?

Tereza Stöckelová is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, assistant professor at the Department of General Anthropology, Charles University, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review. Her work is situated in-between sociology, social anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and draws upon actor network theory and related material semiotic methodologies. She has investigated academic practices in the context of current policy changes, science and society relations and environmental controversies. She has also been engaged in policy and public debates on science and research assessment, and was a member of a working group that received the John Ziman prize in 2014 for the European Science Foundation report Science in Society: caring for our futures in turbulent times (chaired by Ulrike Felt). In 2015 she started a new research project concerned with “multiple medicine” – ethnography of the interfaces between biomedical and alternative therapeutic practices.

Teaching activities

2011 to present: assistant professor, Department of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University.
2013-2014: guest professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, Austria.
Foreign scholarships, fellowships or other academic study abroad
VI–VIII/2009 Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Edinburgh, UK
XI/2004–VI/2005 Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Graz, Austria
VIII–X/2004 Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris, France

Biographic information
Member of editorial board of Biograf, a journal for qualitative sociology.

Selected bibliography

Brož, L., T. Stöckelová, 2015. Přísliby a úskalí symetrie: sociální vědy v zemi za zrcadlem. [Through the Looking-Glass and What the Social Sciences Found There] Cargo: časopis pro kulturní/sociální antropologii, 1-2: 5-33.

Stöckelová, T., T. Virtová. 2015. A tool for learning or a tool for cheating? The many-sided effects of a participatory student website in mass higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45 (3): 597-607.

Stöckelová, T. 2014. Power at the Interfaces: The Contested Orderings of Academic Presents and Futures in a Social Science Department. Higher Education Policy, 27: 435–451.

Dvořáčková, J., P. Pabian, S. Smith, T. Stöckelová, K. Šima, T. Virtová. 2014. Politika a každodennost na českých vysokých školách: Etnografické pohledy na vzdělávání a výzkum [Politics and everyday life in Czech universities: Ethnographic perspectives on teaching, learning and research]. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství.

Stöckelová, T., Y. Abu Ghosh (eds.). 2013. Etnografie: Improvizace v teorii a terénní praxi. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství.

Stöckelová, T. 2013. “Theory has no Big Others in STS”. Pp. 88-98 in H. Corvellec (ed). What is theory? Answers from the social and cultural sciences. Liber, CBS Press - Copenhagen.

Stöckelová, T. 2012. Nebezpečné známosti: O vztahu sociálních věd a společnosti. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství.

Linková, M., T. Stöckelová. 2012. Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment. Science & Public Policy, 39 (5): 618-629.

Stöckelová, T. 2012. Social technology transfer? Movement of social science knowledge beyond the academy. Theory & Psychology, 2(2): 148-161.

Stöckelová, T. 2012. Immutable mobiles derailed: STS and the epistemic geopolitics of research assessment. Science, Technology & Human Values, 37(2): 286-311.

Garforth, L., T. Stöckelová. 2012. Science Policy and STS from Other Epistemic Places. Science, Technology & Human Values, 37(2): 226-240.