Susanne Bauer

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Visiting address Moltke Moes vei 31 Eilert Sundts hus 10. etg. 0851 Oslo
Postal address Postboks 1108 Blindern 0317 Oslo

Academic interests

Susanne Bauer’s research draws from STS as well as from history, sociology and anthropology of science. It has dealt in particular with health data infrastructures, the politics of categories, infrastructures and algorithms in epidemiology and environmental health. She has longstanding research collaborations with scientists working on the aftermaths of nuclear exposures in post-Soviet countries.

Through combined archival and ethnographic work, Susanne's research asks for the epistemic infrastructures and the sociomaterial orderings enacted through scientific practices in the wet labs of the life sciences and in the dry labs of informatics. While based at University of Frankfurt/Main, she embarked on a collective project on a multispecies study of the intersections of life and technology at Frankfurt airport. Her current projects engage feminist technoscience studies and postcolonial science studies and contribute to STS scholarship on algorithms, biopolitics and human-animal relations, postsocialism and technoscience east of what used to be the iron curtain.

Supervision and co-laboration interests (A-Z): airports, algorithms, box practices, biomonitoring, chemosociality, data centers, decolonial STS, digital fish, experimentalization, feminist technoscience studies, (post)genomics, haunted infrastructures, ionizing radiation, multispecies monitoring, noosphere, numbers in biomedicine, one health, ontological politics, promise of personalization, prototyping, queer ecologies, regulation, radioactive soils, scoring practices, temporalities, unruly bodies, virtual ethnography, wired natures, xenobiotics, yellowcake, zoonoses. 

Courses taught

Since spring 2016: TIK4011 - Science and Technology in Politics and Society; Fall 2016/2017, Fall 2021: TIK4001 Lectures in STS Module.

Before coming to Oslo, Susanne Bauer taught STS and sociology, history and anthropology of science at Goethe University Frankfurt (2012-15), at Humboldt University Berlin as well as at Indiana University in Bloomington (fall 2011). Courses included Technoscience and Gender, Laboratory Ethnographies, Atomic Challenges, Cold War Science, Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies, Sociology of Science after Fukushima.

Background

Susanne Bauer came to STS from a background of environmental sciences and epidemiology. Having completed studies in environmental engineering and social sciences in Berlin (Germany) and Odessa (Ukraine), she graduated with a Dipl.-Ing. (MSc) from TU Berlin in 1997 and then completed a doctorate in public health at University of Bielefeld (Dr PH) in 2004. As a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Science, Technology and Society in Graz (Austria) and in the Biomedicine on Display group at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), she retrained in history and sociology of science, technology and medicine. From 2012 through  2016 she completed a junior professorship in sociology (habilitation equivalent) at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. 

She was co-curator of the exhibition “Split+Splice. Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen” and the experimental platform Paths of Knowledge/Wege des Wissens (with Medical School Brandenburg Theodor Fontane).

Between 1997 and 2004 Susanne worked as environmental epidemiologist, participating in EU-funded projects researching the aftermath of Soviet nuclear programs in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation and has maintained a range of project collaborations with colleagues in post-Soviet countries.

Positions held

Before joining the STS group at TIK, Susanne Bauer held a junior professorship (sociology of science) at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (2012-15). She was research scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science (2009-2011) and at the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin (2008-2009) and postdoctoral researcher in the “Biomedicine on Display” project at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (2005-09). In 2011 she was visiting professor at Indiana University, Bloomington (U.S.), and in 2014/15 senior fellow at IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna.

 

Tags: Science and Technology Studies (STS), Russia, Central Asia, Sociology, History and Anthropology of Science, Technology and Medicine, feminist technoscience and infrastructure studies, environmental health

Publications

If you’d like to read something and can’t access it, feel free to email me for a copy. 

 

Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina; Rentetzi, Maria (2020). Boxes: A Field Guide. Manchester: Mattering Press. Open Access

Bauer, Susanne; Güttler, Nils & Schlünder, Martina (2019). Encounters in Borderlands: Borderlining Animals and Technology at Frankfurt Airport. Environmental Humanities.  ISSN 2201-1919.  11(2), s 247- 279

Bauer, Susanne (2019). Indexing, Coding, Scoring: The Engine Room of Epidemiology and its Routinized Techno-Digestions. Somatechnics.  ISSN 2044-0138.  9(2-3), s 223- 243

Amelang, Katrin & Bauer, Susanne (2019). Following the algorithm: How epidemiological risk-scores do accountability. Social Studies of Science.  ISSN 0306-3127.  49(4), s 476- 502 . doi: 10.1177/0306312719862049

Hoeyer, Klaus; Bauer, Susanne & Pickersgill, Martyn (2019). Datafication and accountability in public health: Introduction to a special issue. Social Studies of Science.  ISSN 0306-3127.  49(4), s 459- 475

Bauer, Susanne (2018). Radiation Science After the Cold War. The Politics of Measurement, Risk, and Compensation in Kazakhstan, In Olga Zvonareva; Evgeniya Popova & Klasien Horstman (ed.),  Health, Technologies and Politics in Post-Soviet Settings: Navigating Uncertainties. Palgrave Macmillan.  ISBN 9783319641485.  Chapter 9.  s 225 - 249

Bauer, Susanne; Kalmbach, Karena & Kasperski, Tatiana (2017). From Pripyat to Paris, from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout, In Laurel MacDowell (ed.),  Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy.  University of Toronto Press.  ISBN 9781442626294.  Chapter 5.  s 149 - 189

Bauer, Susanne: Population Genetics, Cybernetics of Difference, and Pasts in the Present: Soviet and post-Soviet Maps on Human Variation. History of the Human Sciences 28(5) 2015: 146-167.

Bauer, Susanne: Virtual Geographies of Belonging. The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research. Science, Technology & Human Values 39(4), 2014: 511-537.

Bauer, Susanne: From Administrative Infrastructure to Biomedical Resource: Danish Population Registries, the 'Scandinavian Laboratory', and the 'Epidemiologist’s Dream'. Science in Context 27(2), 2014: 187-213.

Bauer, Susanne, Sarah Blacker, Nils Güttler, Martina Schlünder: The Racehorse on the Runway. The hybrid ecologies of Frankfurt Airport show us how homes and borders intersect. Nautilus 8 “Home”, Chapter 4 “Into the Wild”, 2013.

Bauer, Susanne: Modeling Population Health. Reflections on the Performativity of Epidemiological Techniques in the Age of Genomics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27(4), 2013: 510-530.

Holmberg, Christine, Christine Bischof, Susanne Bauer: Making Predictions: Computing Populations. Science, Technology & Human Values 38, 2013: 398-420.

Bauer, Susanne: Mining Data, Gathering Variables, and Recombining Information: The Flexible Architecture of Epidemiological Studies. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39, 2008: 415-426.

  • Klaas, Franziska & Bauer, Susanne (2022). Endocrine Disrupting Substances: A Partial Inventory. In Veselá, Lenka (Eds.), Synthetic Becoming. K. Verlag. ISSN 978-3-947858-37-8. p. 252–275.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2022). Fallout Memory Trajectories at Semipalatinsk: Reassembling the Post-Soviet Past. In Bauer, Susanne & Penter, Tanja (Ed.), Tracing the Atom: Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia. Routledge. ISSN 978-1-032-16050-4. p. 196–216. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne & Penter, Tanja (2022). Introduction: Tracing the Atom. Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia. In Bauer, Susanne & Penter, Tanja (Ed.), Tracing the Atom: Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia. Routledge. ISSN 978-1-032-16050-4. p. 1–17. doi: 10.4324/9781003246893. Full text in Research Archive
  • Tvedten, Irene Øvstebø & Bauer, Susanne (2022). Retrofitting towards a greener marine shipping future: Reassembling ship fuels and liquefied natural gas in Norway. Energy Research & Social Science. ISSN 2214-6296. 86(4). doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2021.102423. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne (2021). Pandemic Infrastructure: Epidemiology as Compartmentalization. Mefisto. Rivista di medicina, filosofia, storia. ISSN 2532-8255. 5(1), p. 79–104.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2021). "Dette nummeret vil følge deg gjennom livet ditt" - registre, datakobling og digital selvråderett. Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-336X. 38(1-2), p. 33–44. doi: 10.18261/issn.1504-3053-2021-01-02-04.
  • Güttler, Nils; Schlünder, Martina & Bauer, Susanne (2020). The Ur-Box. Multispecies Take-off from Noah´s Ark to Animal Air Cargo . In Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina & Rentetzi, Maria (Ed.), Boxes: A Field Guide. Mattering Press. ISSN 978–1-912729–01–2. p. 214–229.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2020). Biobank Boxes: Technologies of Population. In Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina & Rentetzi, Maria (Ed.), Boxes: A Field Guide. Mattering Press. ISSN 978–1-912729–01–2. p. 380–395.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2020). Navigation Tools for Studying Boxes: A User’s Manual. In Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina & Rentetzi, Maria (Ed.), Boxes: A Field Guide. Mattering Press. ISSN 978–1-912729–01–2. p. 44–51.
  • Hoeyer, Klaus; Bauer, Susanne & Pickersgill, Martyn (2019). Datafication and accountability in public health: Introduction to a special issue. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. 49(4), p. 459–475. doi: 10.1177/0306312719860202. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne (2019). Beyond the Nuclear Epicenter. Health Research, Knowledge Infrastructures and Secrecy at Semipalatinsk. Cahiers du monde russe. ISSN 1252-6576. 60(2-3), p. 493–516. doi: 10.4000/monderusse.11271.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Güttler, Nils & Schlünder, Martina (2019). Encounters in Borderlands: Borderlining Animals and Technology at Frankfurt Airport. Environmental Humanities. ISSN 2201-1919. 11(2), p. 247–279. doi: 10.1215/22011919-7754445. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne (2019). Indexing, Coding, Scoring: The Engine Room of Epidemiology and its Routinized Techno-Digestions . Somatechnics. ISSN 2044-0138. 9(2-3), p. 223–243 . doi: 10.3366/soma.2019.0281.
  • Amelang, Katrin & Bauer, Susanne (2019). Following the algorithm: How epidemiological risk-scores do accountability. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. 49(4), p. 476–502. doi: 10.1177/0306312719862049.
  • Markabayeva, Akbayan; Bauer, Susanne; Pivina, Lyudmila; Bjørklund, Geir; Chirumbolo, Salvatore & Kerimkulova, Aiman Saylaubekovna [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2018). Increased prevalence of essential hypertension in areas previously exposed to fallout due to nuclear weapons testing at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan. Environmental Research. ISSN 0013-9351. 167, p. 129–135. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2018.07.016.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2017). Radiation Science After the Cold War. The Politics of Measurement, Risk, and Compensation in Kazakhstan. In Zvonareva, Olga; Popova, Evgeniya & Horstman, Klasien (Ed.), Health, Technologies and Politics in Post-Soviet Settings: Navigating Uncertainties. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9783319641485. p. 225–249. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-64149-2_9. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne; Kalmbach, Karena & Kasperski, Tatiana (2017). From Pripyat to Paris,from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout. In MacDowell, Laurel (Eds.), Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy. University of Toronto Press. ISSN 9781442626294. p. 149–189. doi: 10.3138/9781442617339-009.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2017). Science Studies. In Sommer, Marianne; Müller-Wille, Staffan & Reinhardt, Carsten (Ed.), Handbuch Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Verlag J. B. Metzler. ISSN 3476024652. p. 55–67.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Heinemann, Torsten & Lemke, Thomas (2017). Einleitung. Einführung in die Science and Technology Studies. In Bauer, Susanne; Heinemann, Torsten & Lemke, Thomas (Ed.), Science and Technology Studies. Klassische Positionen und aktuelle Perspektiven. Suhrkamp. ISSN 978-3-518-29793-3. p. 7–40.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2016). 'Persönlichkeitsanalyse' als akademische Inwertsetzung. Zeitschrift für medienwissenschaft. ISSN 1869-1722. 2, p. 160–165. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne (2015). Population Genetics, Cybernetics of Difference, and Pasts in the Present: Soviet and post-Soviet Maps on Human Variation. History of the Human Sciences. ISSN 0952-6951. 28(5), p. 146–167. doi: 10.1177/0952695115610570.
  • Bauer, Susanne & Kleiber-Bischof, Christine (2015). Risk Assessors and Bio-Participants: Homo Europaeus in Contemporary Nutrition and Health Research. Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung. ISSN 0940-3566. 25(5/6), p. 191–210.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Vuković, Marija Brajdić; Dányi, Endre; Fabók, Márton & Tchalakov, Ivan (2014). Postsocialism and STS. A subplenary at EASST. EASST Review. ISSN 1384-5160. 33(4), p. 5–8.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). Bauer, Susanne: Mutations in Soviet public health science: Post-Lysenko medical genetics, 1969–1991. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. ISSN 1369-8486. 47(3), p. 163–172. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.016.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). Ernährung als epigenetische Schaltstelle. Wie die Nutrigenomik Körper, Nahrung und Sozialität neu zusammenfügt. In Lux, Vannessa & Richter, Jörg Thomas (Ed.), Kulturen der Epigenetik. Vererbt, codiert, übertragen. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 978-3-11-031603-2. p. 11–22. doi: 10.1515/9783110316032.11.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Fleming, Martha & Olsén, Jan Eric (2014). Im Zwischenraum von Labor und Museum: Eine Ausstellung zur Biomedizin. In te Heesen, Anke & Vöhringer, Margarete (Ed.), Wissenschaft im Museum. Ausstellung im Labor. Kulturverlag Kadmos. ISSN 978-3-86599-223-9. p. 174–195.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). Lenin spannt aus. Alexander Sinowjews „Homo sovieticus“ – eine mehrfache Provokation. Zeithistorische Forschungen. ISSN 1612-6033. 11, p. 485–492.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). Studying BRCA performativity: re-calibrations by and of the social sciences. In Gibbon, Sahra; Joseph, Galen; Mozersky, Jessica; zur Nieden, Andrea & Palfner, Sonja (Ed.), Breast Cancer Gene Research and Medical Practices. Transnational Perspectives in the Time of BRCA. Routledge. ISSN 9780415824064. p. 209–219.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). From Administrative Infrastructure to Biomedical Resource: Danish Population Registries, the 'Scandinavian Laboratory', and the 'Epidemiologist’s Dream'. Science in Context. ISSN 0269-8897. 27(2), p. 187–213. doi: 10.1017/s0269889714000040.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2014). Virtual Geographies of Belonging. The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research. Science, Technology and Human Values. ISSN 0162-2439. 39(4), p. 511–537. doi: 10.1177/0162243914528739.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2013). Technoscience im Museum. Interventionen in Biomedizin und Museologie. In Binder, Beate; von Bose, Friedrich; Ebell, Katrin; Hess, Sabine & Keinz, Anika (Ed.), Eingreifen, kritiseren, verändern!? Interventionen ethnographisch und gendertheoretisch. Westfälisches Dampfboot. ISSN 978-3-89691-913-7. p. 228–241.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Holmberg, Christine & Bischof, Christine (2013). Making Predictions: Computing Populations. Science, Technology and Human Values. ISSN 0162-2439. 38(3), p. 398–420. doi: 10.1177/0162243912439610.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2013). Modeling Population Health. Reflections on the Performativity of Epidemiological Techniques in the Age of Genomics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. ISSN 0745-5194. 27(4), p. 510–530. doi: 10.1111/maq.12054.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina; Reiß, Christian & Hüntelmann, Axel (2012). Cakes und Candies - Zur Geschichte der Ernährung von Versuchstieren. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. ISSN 0170-6233. 35, p. 275–285. doi: 10.1002/bewi.201201600.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2012). Verteilte Handlungsmacht im Experiment - Von der Epistemologie zu multiplen Ontologien. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. ISSN 0170-6233. 35, p. 341–350. doi: 10.1002/bewi.201201601.

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  • Bauer, Susanne & Penter, Tanja (2022). Tracing the Atom: Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-032-16050-4. 220 p. Full text in Research Archive
  • Bauer, Susanne; Schlünder, Martina & Rentetzi, Maria (2020). Boxes: A Field Guide. Mattering Press. ISBN 978–1-912729–01–2. 624 p.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Heinemann, Torsten & Lemke, Thomas (2017). Science and Technology Studies. Klassische Positionen und aktuelle Perspektiven. Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-29793-3. 646 p.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Bischof, Christine; Haufe, Stephan Gabriel; Beck, Stefan & Scholze-Irrlitz, Leonore (2010). Essen in Europa. Kulturelle 'Rückstände' in Nahrung und Körper. Transcript Verlag. ISBN 9783837613940. 194 p.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Bergermann, Ulrike; Hanke, Christine; von Oldenburg, Helene; Reiche, Claudia & Sick, Andrea (2009). Prototypisieren. Eine Messe für Theorie und Kunst. thealit.FRAUEN.KULTUR.LABOR. ISBN 9783930924141. 272 p.
  • Bauer, Susanne & Wahlberg, Ayo (2009). Contested Categories. Life Sciences in Society. Ashgate. ISBN 9780754676188. 210 p.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2006). The Health Impact of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing. Cancer Epidemiology in Areas Adjacent to the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, Kazakhstan. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISBN 3631537301. 233 p.

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  • Bauer, Susanne (2024). Epidemiology’s Data-Drive: Contested Difference Categories and AI Dreaming in the Nordics.
  • Knaus, Tanja & Bauer, Susanne (2023). Voice Diagnostics and the Infrastructuring and Automation of Health Data .
  • Bauer, Susanne (2023). Fallout and food webs from the ground up: examining multispecies legacies of nuclear testing in Kazakhstan.
  • Aalbu, Kjersti & Bauer, Susanne (2023). Data reuse and the politics of repair.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2023). Soil knowledges in Central Asia: Recuperating Human-Soil Relationships.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2023). AI in Society: Understanding the societal impact and the social shaping of AI technologies .
  • Bauer, Susanne & Pileberg, Silje (2023). Jordsmonn har blitt ødelagt. Nå må vi bøte på skadene . [Internet]. https://www.sv.uio.no/tik/forskning/aktuelt/aktuelle-saker/2.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2022). Accountability in AI development and innovation: social science approaches.
  • Bauer, Susanne & Schlünder, Martina (2021). Boxes as Method, Architectures of the Enclosed Sea: from Aquaria to Marine Protected Area, Exhibition "AQUARIA — ​​​​​​​Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea", MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2021). The data heritage of the atomic era. A curatorial approach (Invited talk, Atomic Heritage Conference, Vilnius, 15-18 June 2021) .
  • Holmberg, Christine & Bauer, Susanne (2020). A Digital Platform on Knowledge Infrastructures of Public Health. Digital exhibit and teaching platform (German and English): wegedeswissens.net .
  • Bauer, Susanne; Güttler, Nils & Schlünder, Martina (2020). Noise Screen and Ghost Images: Acoustic Borderlands at Frankfurt Airport, in: Sound & Science: Digital Histories, https://soundandscience.de/contributor-essays/noise-screen-and-ghost-images-acoustic-borderlands-frankfurt-airport .
  • Bauer, Susanne (2019). Soviet Radiation Biology: Navigating the Boundaries of Closed Worlds.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2018). Following the algorithm: time and synchronisation in an epidemiological risk score .
  • Bauer, Susanne (2018). Science and Technology Studies: Resources for Transdisciplinary Investigations.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2018). Invited Commentary: Nuclear Technopolitics. Half-lives, short and long .
  • Bauer, Susanne & Hanke, Christine (2018). Locating the data centre. Attending to place in the study of cloud computing.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2018). Extracting, Scaling, Re-Producing: How digital modelling re-aligns and valuates salmon and public health.
  • Talleraas, Tina & Bauer, Susanne (2018). Avsrekkingens pris. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2017). Following the Algorithm. The Social Life of Risk Scores.
  • Bauer, Susanne (2017). Locating cybersecurity. Teknovatøren. p. 36–37.
  • Bauer, Susanne; Blacker, Sarah; Güttler, Nils & Schlünder, Martina (2013). The Racehorse on the Runway. The hybrid ecologies of Frankfurt Airport show us how homes and borders intersect. nautilus science magazine. 8.

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Published Jan. 26, 2016 8:58 AM - Last modified Sep. 28, 2023 5:58 PM