Section: Science Technology and Innovation Studies
Wendy Faulkner trained in biology and then science and technology policy studies; she conducted her DPhil at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex (awarded 1986). She came to the University of Edinburgh in 1988 to set up postgraduate teaching in technology studies, and has been heavily involved in developing and running Edinburgh’s Masters and Doctoral Programmes in Science and Technology Studies.
Brighton Women and Science Collective (1980) Alice Through the Microscope: The Power of Science over Women's Lives, London: Virago
Wendy Faulkner and Erik Arnold (eds) (1985) Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives, London: Pluto
Wendy Faulkner (1994) 'Conceptualizing knowledge used in innovation: A second look at the science-technology distinction and industrial innovation', Science, Technology, & Human Values, 19(4): 425-58
Wendy Faulkner and Jacqueline Senker (1995) Knowledge Frontiers: Public Sector Research and Industrial Innovation in Biotechnology, Engineering Ceramics and Parallel Computing, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wendy Faulkner (2000) 'The power and the pleasure? A research agenda for "making gender stick" to engineers', Science, Technology, & Human Values, 25(1): 87-119
Wendy Faulkner (2000) 'Dualisms, hierarchies and gender in engineering', Social Studies of Science, 30(5): 759-92, October
Wendy Faulkner (2001) 'The technology question in feminism: A view from feminist technology studies', Women's Studies International Forum, 24(1): 79-95
Tine Kleif & Wendy Faulkner (2003) "I'm no athlete [but] I can make this thing dance!" Men's pleasures in technology', Science, Technology, & Human Values, 28(2): 296-325
Wendy Faulkner and Tine Kleif (2005) ‘One size does not fit all! Gender in/exclusion in a rural community-based ICT initiative’, Journal of Adult and Community Learning, 11(1): 43-61
Wendy Faulkner (2007) ‘“Nuts and bolts and people”: Gender-troubled engineering identities’ Social Studies of Science, 37(3): 331-356, June 2007
I have two current areas of research interest, and welcome new doctoral students in either of these. My main research interest in the last 10 years is the study of gender-technology relations. The main element of this has been the development of an original strand of scholarship, entitled ‘Genders in/of engineering’, which was the subject of an ESRC funded ethnographic study of engineers and their work between 2003 and 2005. [click here for full research report] This work has generated considerable interest from practitioners and policy makers in the UK, and is gaining significant international visibility.
Between 2001 and 2004, I participated in a European collaborative study about strategies of gender inclusion in the information society (SIGIS), which has generated a massive resource for theory and policy development around gender and ICT. [See www.sigis.ist.org] A book from this study is currently in-progress. And, with Lisa Lee and James Stewart, I am currently involved in another European collaborative project, Prometea, investigating women in engineering research. With Carme Alemany of Estudis, Barcelona, we willing be writing about best practice in the retention of women engineers. [See www.prometea.info]
My other current research interest is in the politics and processes of enhancing public engagement in new or controversial areas of science and technology. This is the subject of a three year ESRC funded project (2005 to 2008), entitled ‘The social dynamics of public engagement in stem cell research’, with sociologists Sarah Parry and Sarah Cunningham-Burley and Professor Austin Smith (formerly) of the Institute for Stem Cell Research. This research contributes to the programme of socioeconomic research on innovation in genomics at the University of Edinburgh INNOGEN Centre. [See www.talkingstemcells.ed.ac.uk]
In the past, I have also been active in the field of industrial innovation and R&D, contributing in particular to scholarship on the flows and transformations of knowledge used in innovation.
I convene and/or teach on the following courses:
This page was published on 3 September 2008