10th March 2022 –2:30 – 4:30pm
Seminar « Géographie et science sociales » (Marie-Vic Ozouf Marignier and Nicolas Verdier)
EHESS building, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers
Niki Vermeulen, Senior Lecturer – History and Sociology – School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh
“In this seminar I will try to synthesise my work on the organisation of collaboration in the life sciences. It will give a historical overview of the topic, and look into reasons for and forms of collaboration, as well as theories and methods for studying collaboration, including mixed methods research. Based on various case studies in ecology, genomics, systems biology and biomedicine, I attend to different configurations of collaboration, from international networks to survey life in the ocean, to the emergence of local collaborations between biologist and computer scientists to model life.
As such, I have developed a particular interest in the spaces in which people work together, analysing choreographies of collaboration, i.e. movements of aggregation, circulation and integration to understand the spatial dynamics of research. This also highlights the importance of social and material infrastructures for collaboration, including the creation of databases, and invites to explore buildings especially designed to stimulate collaboration, such as the new Francis Crick Institute which concentrates biomedical research in the city centre of London. Known as the ‘Knowledge Quarter’, this connects to ideas of research and innovation campuses or hubs, that spark creativity through co-location, ideas which have most likely also inspired the creation of Campus Condorcet.”