I have for a long time thought about writing about when my colleagues finish their defence, and become PhD’s. Well I seem to have forgotten about that in the thick of battle during the semester. Well, now I’m going to start backblogging.
The last dissertation I wrote about was Petra Jonvallen’s book Testing Pills, Enacting Obesity, the next one written in English from the department is Corinna Kruse’s The Making of Valid Data. People and Machines in Genetic Research Practice, which was defended on the 22 of September 2007.
Corinna’s dissertation is a multisited laboratory ethnography about how ‘samples are turned into data that is considered valid and useful by the research community.’ The dissertation dives into machines, norms, ideals, skills, as well as validity, agency reproducibility.
Theoretically Corinna’s study draws on Bruno Latour’s popular concept of immutable mobiles and Karen Barad’s framework of agential realism to discuss ‘various notions of humanness and machineness which shaped scientists’ practices and made the creation of valid data possible.’
A long-time overdue, Congratulations Corinna!
