Maximilian Fochler
Biographic Data
| ID | 137861 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maximilian Fochler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maximilian |
| FAMILY NAME | Fochler |
| SIGNATURE | FOCHLER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8601-3210 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 168 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Forschungsbewertungen neu denken
Reaktion auf Nölting et al. in GAIA 34/2 (2025): Wissenschaftsorganisationen als Impulsgeber einer Nachhaltigkeitstransformation, und Mayer in GAIA 34/4 (2025): Universitäten in der Nachhaltigkeitstransformation: Es braucht Willen und ZeitDie Leistungsmessung in der Wissenschaft wird oft als einseitig kritisiert. Aktuelle Reformbewegungen von research assessments wollen hier Abhilfe schaffen. In Österreich bieten erste Änderungen bei Förderprogra…
Towards a “Hinterland” for Doing Relevance. A Typology of Practices and Competencies to Guide the Development of more Relevant Research and Career Paths
Troubling diagnoses have been made about academic research cultures regarding their capacity to address social and environmental problems, challenging scholars in science and technology studies (STS) and related fields to consider the meanings of relevance, respective practices, and enabling conditions. This paper asks about practices by which research is aligned with reflections on the relevance of knowledge production, resulting in re-orientati…
Diving into Relevance
The deep sea is many things: a subject of both fascination and indifference; a realm of great unknowns and scientific inquiry; and a source of untapped potential and looming exploitation. Its multifaceted nature is also visible in scientific research on the deep sea. While traditional relevance narratives in the field of deep sea research centred around fundamental knowledge creation, calls for doing societally relevant research are intensifying.…
Modes of Relevance in Research
In response to growing social, ecological and health-related challenges, scientists are increasingly expected to demonstrate the societal relevance of their work. This special issue critically examines the concept of “relevance” in scientific research, exploring how it is defined, enacted and contested across disciplines, institutions and collaborations. We propose a practice-oriented conceptualization of “doing relevance”, understanding it not a…
Orientation work
Relevant research in a longer-term perspective is not result of a one-point intervention and re-direction of research to address social-environmental problems. Rather, for a research field to stay relevant to social-environmental issues, researchers and their communities need to continually engage in what we conceptualise as orientation work. Contrary to the notion of an invisible hand governing science in self-organised ways, the notion of orien…
Innovation in Technology Instead of Thinking? Assetization and Its Epistemic Consequences in Academia
This paper draws on the notion of the asset to better understand the role of innovative research technologies in researchers' practices and decisions. Faced with both the need to accumulate academic capital to make a living in academia and with many uncertainties about the future, researchers must find ways to anticipate future academic revenues. We illustrate that innovative research technologies provide a suitable means for doing so: First, bec…
From ‘making lists’ to conducting ‘well-rounded’ studies
Soil microbial ecology is a relatively young research field that became established around the middle of the 20th century and has grown considerably since then. We analyze two epistemic re-orientations in the field, asking how possibilities for creating do-able problems within current conditions of research governance and researchers' collective sense-making about new, more desirable modes of research were intertwined in these developments. We sh…
Changing articulations of relevance in soil science
This paper traces how the self-understanding of soil science has changed in relation to ideas of societal relevance and academic legitimacy. While soil science was established as an academic discipline with strong links to agriculture, this link was largely lost around 1980. This led to a perceived crisis of the discipline, which has been followed by a long process of redefining its self-understanding. Building on document analysis and qualitativ…
“I am Primarily Paid for Publishing…”
Building on group discussions and interviews with life science researchers in Austria, this paper analyses the narratives that researchers use in describing what they feel responsible for, with a particular focus on how they perceive the societal responsibilities of their research. Our analysis shows that the core narratives used by the life scientists participating in this study continue to be informed by the linear model of innovation. This mak…
Imagine RRI. A card-based method for reflecting on responsibility in life science research
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a new buzzword in science policy, pointing to a shift in the role of research in contemporary societies. While on a discursive level responsibility is easily welcomed, implementing RRI in research practice appears challenging. RRI as an agent for change must compete with other forces shaping the current research system and its institutions, such as innovation orientation, competition and indica…
Anticipatory Uncertainty
The institutional contexts of research increasingly require researchers to anticipate their productivity and the uncertainties inherent in their research. This applies to both academic researchers and to researchers in start-up companies. This creates a specific kind of uncertainty, anticipatory uncertainty, that we define as the state of being uncertain as to whether research processes will be productive in a specific time frame and along situat…
Der gesellschaftliche Impact sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens in Österreich
Der hier vorliegende Bericht basiert auf einer explorativen Studie zum gesellschaftlichen Impact der universitär verankerten Sozialwissenschaften in Österreich und zu den Möglichkeiten diesen zu erfassen/zu messen. Sein Ziel ist es einen differenzierten Input zu der Diskussion zur gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich zu leisten. Unsere Ausführungen basieren auf einer breiten Analyse der relevanten Fach…
Implicated in the Indicator Game? An Experimental Debate
The rise of new modes evaluating academic work has substantially changed institutions and cultures of knowledge production. This has been reflected and criticized in the literature in STS and beyond. For STS scholars, these debates (should) however have an even more specific dimension. Many of us are experts on aspects of these changes. But at the same time, we too are part of the processes we are analyzing, and often criticizing. To put it sligh…
Beyond and between academia and business
Research and innovation policy has invested considerable effort in creating new institutional spaces at the interface of academia and business. High-tech startups founded by academic entrepreneurs have been central to these policy imaginaries. These companies offer researchers new possibilities beyond and between academia and larger industry. However, the field of science and technology studies has thus far shown only limited interest in understa…
Variants of Epistemic Capitalism
Capitalist dynamics in knowledge production are not limited to situations in which economic interests influence researchers’ practices. Building on laboratory studies and the French “pragmatic” tradition in sociology, this article proposes an approach to tackle more pervasive capitalist logics at work in contemporary research and their consequences. It uses the term epistemic capitalism to denote the accumulation of capital, as worth made durable…
Unsustainable Growth, Hyper-Competition, and Worth in Life Science Research
There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and "hyper-competition." Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own…
Slim Futures and the Fat Pill
Innovation politics is seen as an ever more central area of public policy, and as a key means for shaping societal futures. Particularly in Europe, with its history of controversial public debates about innovations, the idea that scientific progress is automatically equated with societal progress seems hard to sustain. Broader public participation within techno-scientific governance seems necessary; though who is to participate in which form ofte…
Machineries for Making Publics
Coming to Terms with Biomedical Technologies in Different Technopolitical Cultures
In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ''technopolitical culture,'' we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conce…
Unruly ethics
This paper explores the difficulties of addressing ethical questions of genome research in a public engagement setting where laypeople and scientists met for a longer period of time. While professional ethics mostly ignores public meaning, we aimed at a bottom-up approach to ethics in order to broaden the way in which ethical aspects of genomics can be addressed. However, within this interaction we identified a number of difficulties that constra…
Visions and Versions of Governing Biomedicine
In recent years, governance and public participation have developed into key notions within both policy discourse and academic analysis. While there is much discussion on developing new modes of governance and public participation, little empirical attention is paid to the public's perception of models, possibilities and limits of participation and governance. Building on focus group data collected in Austria within the framework of a European pr…
Machineries for Making Publics
Unsustainable Growth, Hyper-Competition, and Worth in Life Science Research
There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and "hyper-competition." Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own…
Beyond and between academia and business
Research and innovation policy has invested considerable effort in creating new institutional spaces at the interface of academia and business. High-tech startups founded by academic entrepreneurs have been central to these policy imaginaries. These companies offer researchers new possibilities beyond and between academia and larger industry. However, the field of science and technology studies has thus far shown only limited interest in understa…
Visions and Versions of Governing Biomedicine
In recent years, governance and public participation have developed into key notions within both policy discourse and academic analysis. While there is much discussion on developing new modes of governance and public participation, little empirical attention is paid to the public's perception of models, possibilities and limits of participation and governance. Building on focus group data collected in Austria within the framework of a European pr…
Anticipatory Uncertainty
The institutional contexts of research increasingly require researchers to anticipate their productivity and the uncertainties inherent in their research. This applies to both academic researchers and to researchers in start-up companies. This creates a specific kind of uncertainty, anticipatory uncertainty, that we define as the state of being uncertain as to whether research processes will be productive in a specific time frame and along situat…
Coming to Terms with Biomedical Technologies in Different Technopolitical Cultures
In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ''technopolitical culture,'' we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conce…
Modes of Relevance in Research
In response to growing social, ecological and health-related challenges, scientists are increasingly expected to demonstrate the societal relevance of their work. This special issue critically examines the concept of “relevance” in scientific research, exploring how it is defined, enacted and contested across disciplines, institutions and collaborations. We propose a practice-oriented conceptualization of “doing relevance”, understanding it not a…
Variants of Epistemic Capitalism
Capitalist dynamics in knowledge production are not limited to situations in which economic interests influence researchers’ practices. Building on laboratory studies and the French “pragmatic” tradition in sociology, this article proposes an approach to tackle more pervasive capitalist logics at work in contemporary research and their consequences. It uses the term epistemic capitalism to denote the accumulation of capital, as worth made durable…
Towards a “Hinterland” for Doing Relevance. A Typology of Practices and Competencies to Guide the Development of more Relevant Research and Career Paths
Troubling diagnoses have been made about academic research cultures regarding their capacity to address social and environmental problems, challenging scholars in science and technology studies (STS) and related fields to consider the meanings of relevance, respective practices, and enabling conditions. This paper asks about practices by which research is aligned with reflections on the relevance of knowledge production, resulting in re-orientati…
Innovation in Technology Instead of Thinking? Assetization and Its Epistemic Consequences in Academia
This paper draws on the notion of the asset to better understand the role of innovative research technologies in researchers' practices and decisions. Faced with both the need to accumulate academic capital to make a living in academia and with many uncertainties about the future, researchers must find ways to anticipate future academic revenues. We illustrate that innovative research technologies provide a suitable means for doing so: First, bec…
Slim Futures and the Fat Pill
Innovation politics is seen as an ever more central area of public policy, and as a key means for shaping societal futures. Particularly in Europe, with its history of controversial public debates about innovations, the idea that scientific progress is automatically equated with societal progress seems hard to sustain. Broader public participation within techno-scientific governance seems necessary; though who is to participate in which form ofte…
Diving into Relevance
The deep sea is many things: a subject of both fascination and indifference; a realm of great unknowns and scientific inquiry; and a source of untapped potential and looming exploitation. Its multifaceted nature is also visible in scientific research on the deep sea. While traditional relevance narratives in the field of deep sea research centred around fundamental knowledge creation, calls for doing societally relevant research are intensifying.…
From ‘making lists’ to conducting ‘well-rounded’ studies
Soil microbial ecology is a relatively young research field that became established around the middle of the 20th century and has grown considerably since then. We analyze two epistemic re-orientations in the field, asking how possibilities for creating do-able problems within current conditions of research governance and researchers' collective sense-making about new, more desirable modes of research were intertwined in these developments. We sh…
Visions and Versions of Governing Biomedicine
In recent years, governance and public participation have developed into key notions within both policy discourse and academic analysis. While there is much discussion on developing new modes of governance and public participation, little empirical attention is paid to the public's perception of models, possibilities and limits of participation and governance. Building on focus group data collected in Austria within the framework of a European pr…
Unruly ethics
This paper explores the difficulties of addressing ethical questions of genome research in a public engagement setting where laypeople and scientists met for a longer period of time. While professional ethics mostly ignores public meaning, we aimed at a bottom-up approach to ethics in order to broaden the way in which ethical aspects of genomics can be addressed. However, within this interaction we identified a number of difficulties that constra…
Machineries for Making Publics
Coming to Terms with Biomedical Technologies in Different Technopolitical Cultures
In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ''technopolitical culture,'' we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conce…
Slim Futures and the Fat Pill
Innovation politics is seen as an ever more central area of public policy, and as a key means for shaping societal futures. Particularly in Europe, with its history of controversial public debates about innovations, the idea that scientific progress is automatically equated with societal progress seems hard to sustain. Broader public participation within techno-scientific governance seems necessary; though who is to participate in which form ofte…
Beyond and between academia and business
Research and innovation policy has invested considerable effort in creating new institutional spaces at the interface of academia and business. High-tech startups founded by academic entrepreneurs have been central to these policy imaginaries. These companies offer researchers new possibilities beyond and between academia and larger industry. However, the field of science and technology studies has thus far shown only limited interest in understa…
Variants of Epistemic Capitalism
Capitalist dynamics in knowledge production are not limited to situations in which economic interests influence researchers’ practices. Building on laboratory studies and the French “pragmatic” tradition in sociology, this article proposes an approach to tackle more pervasive capitalist logics at work in contemporary research and their consequences. It uses the term epistemic capitalism to denote the accumulation of capital, as worth made durable…
Unsustainable Growth, Hyper-Competition, and Worth in Life Science Research
There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and "hyper-competition." Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own…
Implicated in the Indicator Game? An Experimental Debate
The rise of new modes evaluating academic work has substantially changed institutions and cultures of knowledge production. This has been reflected and criticized in the literature in STS and beyond. For STS scholars, these debates (should) however have an even more specific dimension. Many of us are experts on aspects of these changes. But at the same time, we too are part of the processes we are analyzing, and often criticizing. To put it sligh…
Imagine RRI. A card-based method for reflecting on responsibility in life science research
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a new buzzword in science policy, pointing to a shift in the role of research in contemporary societies. While on a discursive level responsibility is easily welcomed, implementing RRI in research practice appears challenging. RRI as an agent for change must compete with other forces shaping the current research system and its institutions, such as innovation orientation, competition and indica…
Anticipatory Uncertainty
The institutional contexts of research increasingly require researchers to anticipate their productivity and the uncertainties inherent in their research. This applies to both academic researchers and to researchers in start-up companies. This creates a specific kind of uncertainty, anticipatory uncertainty, that we define as the state of being uncertain as to whether research processes will be productive in a specific time frame and along situat…
Der gesellschaftliche Impact sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens in Österreich
Der hier vorliegende Bericht basiert auf einer explorativen Studie zum gesellschaftlichen Impact der universitär verankerten Sozialwissenschaften in Österreich und zu den Möglichkeiten diesen zu erfassen/zu messen. Sein Ziel ist es einen differenzierten Input zu der Diskussion zur gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich zu leisten. Unsere Ausführungen basieren auf einer breiten Analyse der relevanten Fach…
“I am Primarily Paid for Publishing…”
Building on group discussions and interviews with life science researchers in Austria, this paper analyses the narratives that researchers use in describing what they feel responsible for, with a particular focus on how they perceive the societal responsibilities of their research. Our analysis shows that the core narratives used by the life scientists participating in this study continue to be informed by the linear model of innovation. This mak…
From ‘making lists’ to conducting ‘well-rounded’ studies
Soil microbial ecology is a relatively young research field that became established around the middle of the 20th century and has grown considerably since then. We analyze two epistemic re-orientations in the field, asking how possibilities for creating do-able problems within current conditions of research governance and researchers' collective sense-making about new, more desirable modes of research were intertwined in these developments. We sh…
Changing articulations of relevance in soil science
This paper traces how the self-understanding of soil science has changed in relation to ideas of societal relevance and academic legitimacy. While soil science was established as an academic discipline with strong links to agriculture, this link was largely lost around 1980. This led to a perceived crisis of the discipline, which has been followed by a long process of redefining its self-understanding. Building on document analysis and qualitativ…
Innovation in Technology Instead of Thinking? Assetization and Its Epistemic Consequences in Academia
This paper draws on the notion of the asset to better understand the role of innovative research technologies in researchers' practices and decisions. Faced with both the need to accumulate academic capital to make a living in academia and with many uncertainties about the future, researchers must find ways to anticipate future academic revenues. We illustrate that innovative research technologies provide a suitable means for doing so: First, bec…
Towards a “Hinterland” for Doing Relevance. A Typology of Practices and Competencies to Guide the Development of more Relevant Research and Career Paths
Troubling diagnoses have been made about academic research cultures regarding their capacity to address social and environmental problems, challenging scholars in science and technology studies (STS) and related fields to consider the meanings of relevance, respective practices, and enabling conditions. This paper asks about practices by which research is aligned with reflections on the relevance of knowledge production, resulting in re-orientati…
Diving into Relevance
The deep sea is many things: a subject of both fascination and indifference; a realm of great unknowns and scientific inquiry; and a source of untapped potential and looming exploitation. Its multifaceted nature is also visible in scientific research on the deep sea. While traditional relevance narratives in the field of deep sea research centred around fundamental knowledge creation, calls for doing societally relevant research are intensifying.…
Modes of Relevance in Research
In response to growing social, ecological and health-related challenges, scientists are increasingly expected to demonstrate the societal relevance of their work. This special issue critically examines the concept of “relevance” in scientific research, exploring how it is defined, enacted and contested across disciplines, institutions and collaborations. We propose a practice-oriented conceptualization of “doing relevance”, understanding it not a…
Orientation work
Relevant research in a longer-term perspective is not result of a one-point intervention and re-direction of research to address social-environmental problems. Rather, for a research field to stay relevant to social-environmental issues, researchers and their communities need to continually engage in what we conceptualise as orientation work. Contrary to the notion of an invisible hand governing science in self-organised ways, the notion of orien…
Forschungsbewertungen neu denken
Reaktion auf Nölting et al. in GAIA 34/2 (2025): Wissenschaftsorganisationen als Impulsgeber einer Nachhaltigkeitstransformation, und Mayer in GAIA 34/4 (2025): Universitäten in der Nachhaltigkeitstransformation: Es braucht Willen und ZeitDie Leistungsmessung in der Wissenschaft wird oft als einseitig kritisiert. Aktuelle Reformbewegungen von research assessments wollen hier Abhilfe schaffen. In Österreich bieten erste Änderungen bei Förderprogra…
Sociology (20 works) · Political science (19 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Engineering (9 works) · Engineering ethics (9 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)