Sarah Davies (Part 2) on luck, disrupting excellence, and cultures of care

Sarah Davies is a Professor of Technosciences, Materiality, & Digital Cultures at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University of Vienna. Overall her work explores how science and society are co-produced, with the digital and digitisation being key aspects. Of particular interest for our discussions is her current research on the conditions of academic work and knowledge production. In Part 2, Sarah Davies shares from both her research and lived experiences on topics like equity and valuing diverse work, care work in academia and who does that work, creating collegial research cultures, and about luck - the trigger for why I wanted to talk to Sarah. She discusses a recent paper she and co-authors published on luck and the situations of research, and how accounting for luck might just be one way of disrupting problematic rhetorics of excellence. This is a continuation of Part 1 of our conversation where she talked about her own career path, touching on issues of mobility, precarity and projectification of research notions of excellence. “Care for people is very integrated with care for their science…You [can’t] separate the epistemic production, the knowledge production, from caring for people”“It throws into contrast, this narrative of the heroic, excellent individual researcher, and the complex contexts in which good research is done.”“You can't do science alone, you can't be this isolated person, you actually need quite some social skills” “When we talk about excellence, that is somehow really seen as not including luck […] It's important to take luck seriously.”Overview (times approximate) [Transcript coming soon]:00:29 Episode introduction03:26 Sarah’s inaugural lecture06:06 Negotiating contemporary academia, related equity issues & how we can see and value diverse work08:17 Acknowledging care work and who does that work11:09 Increasing interest in statements on research cultures12:38 Having explicit discussions about how we engage together17:19 The way people speak about luck in academic trajectories & the disruption of the excellence rhetoric22:15 Toxic behaviors and the care work it requires25:14 Taking luck seriously & her won experiences of luck30:00 The importance of people and social skills31:55 Sarah’s experiences in setting up her own group and learning through doing37:05 EndRelated links:Sarah’s Inaugural lectureText: https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1622120Video: https://vimeo.com/780321785/0ef9327e6b Papers:Davies, Sarah R., and Maja Horst. 2015. ‘Crafting the Group: Care in Research Management’. Social Studies of Science 45 (3): 371–93. On ‘research culture' (56 min) - Wellcome seems to be taking the lead here:Davies, S. R., & Pham, B.-C. (2023). Luck and the...

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