Reconstruire les laboratoires

Rebuilding Laboratories: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Call for papers

Editors: Urszula Pawlicka-Deger and Julia P. Myatt

A common image of a laboratory is that of a group of people in white coats gathered together in a sterile and controlled room equipped with pipettes, flasks, funnels, and other chemical instruments to conduct experiments and perform measurements. The laboratory is seen as an extraordinary place for scientific knowledge production that is imbued with the power to transform nature and society. With the spread of the concept of a laboratory into city spaces, cultural institutions, and the humanities departments, the image and definition of the lab have been extended significantly. A laboratory goes beyond the notion of a fixed place involving material instruments and hands-on scientific exploration, becoming, instead, a widely understood meeting place, a collaborative network, and a field-based project set up for a specific period and managed without any equipment. The laboratory has been spread across sectors and transformed entirely from a site belonging to the sciences to a place for the humanities research and teaching. There is not one lab model but many different types of labs, which have their own architectures and practices. The spread of laboratories has begun a new chapter in the history of a laboratory. Labs are thus rebuilt and relocated; however, their core values remain unchanged. One reason for turning various spaces into laboratories is thus to apply the laboratory ethos: experimentation, collaboration, and innovation. In light of the process of rebuilding laboratories, many questions still remain underexplored: When and how is a place turned into a laboratory? What lessons can we take from scientific labs to apply them to ideas and places that had never been established for this purpose? How have labs been transformed due to changes in technology, research, and sector challenges in recent years? In what ways does access to digital resources and the standardization of methods affect the development of knowledge in labs? How do the humanities push the boundaries of a laboratory? How has a lab been extended from a discipline-based space to the cross-sector venue? How does a lab merge the academic work with entrepreneurship? How does a lab become a place for the epistemological and disciplinary intersections between the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and software engineering?

The debate on laboratories takes us to the tradition of Laboratory Studies, defined by sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina as the study of science and technology through direct observation and discourse analysis at the root where knowledge is produced, in the scientific laboratory. The 1970s/1980s were a productive time for investigating laboratories when a group of sociologists (Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Karin Knorr Cetina, Michael Lynch, and Harry Collins) stepped inside scientific labs to conduct ethnographic research on scientific knowledge production. The goal of the studies was to reveal the process of scientific work and understand the power of this place in constructing reality. A laboratory was considered as an epistemically special place since it was an ‘important agent of scientific development’ (Knorr Cetina). Laboratory Studies of the 1980s/1990s played a significant role in understanding this critical site of scientific knowledge creation. However, the study has met with criticism of having a reductive view of social reality and narrowing down investigations to the closed lab environment.

In 2008, Isis. A Journal of the History of Science Society published a Focus section devoted to laboratory history. This special issue brought together well-recognized historians and sociologists of science―Thomas F. Gieryn, Graeme Gooday, Ursula Klein, and Robert E. Kohler―who reviewed the laboratory concept years after establishing Laboratory Studies. As Kohler observed, after the 1980s and 1990s, the notion of the laboratory was neglected until interest was revived again in the twenty-first century. The rise of labs outside the scientific environment―in the humanities, cultural institutions (libraries and museums), and public spaces―has begun a specific, new chapter in the history of a laboratory. However, how to approach the broad, complex, and multifaceted laboratory studies? Graeme Gooday proposed an alternative to the interpretations of labs, which have changed and diversified over the past years. As he claimed, ‘Originally, a laboratory could be a site of organic growth or material manufacture, but it can now be a specialized domain for technological development, educational training, or quality testing’ (2008). This observation is a starting point for the discussion on the ‘permeable or non-existent’ boundaries between laboratories and other spaces, which are now arranged into experimental laboratories without even being designated for such a purpose. In light of these changes, Gooday suggested an inclusive approach to laboratory studies. He claimed that theorists now must seek to understand ‘what constitutes a laboratory, especially in relation to the difficulty of demarcating this scientific space from other less formal sites of empirical making of new knowledge or new artifacts’ (2008). The special issue of Isis was a substantial step towards reinvigorating the studies of laboratories from a new, inclusive perspective.

Despite the growing interest in the concept of a laboratory in the humanities, the sciences, and the public sector, currently, there are no monographs and special issues devoted to laboratories in the vein of Gooday’s inclusive approach. Moreover, the present discussions are discipline-focused (scientific labs versus humanities labs) rather than problem-focused (e.g., infrastructure, collaboration, sustainability).

There are many reasons why this topic should be addressed: (1) A laboratory entails specific connotations, practices, and protocols; therefore, the issue is how this concept transforms particular places and how it contributes to the establishment of new forms of experimental knowledge across disciplines; (2) The core of a lab’s practice is collaboration; the question is thus how the collaborative work has changed in the history of the lab along with the application of computing technologies, the development of digital research environment and the rise of multidisciplinary, shared laboratories; (3) A laboratory develops into a cross-sector facility that builds collaboration and partnership between the academy, public institutions, and commercial companies; this shift raises the question of the consequences of turning the lab into entrepreneurship and the role of new positions in academia that link it to the industry sector, such as the research software engineer.

We propose to undertake the study of laboratories again twelve years from the publication of the “Laboratory History” focus in Isis (2008). 

The contributions will build the discussion around such questions as:

- How are places and fields turned into laboratories even though they had never been designated and conceptualized for this purpose?

- How do labs develop into collaborative, multidisciplinary, and shared venues in response to changes in technology, research and teaching practices, and sector challenges?

- How has the transformation of labs changed the process of knowledge production in various fields ranging from the sciences to medical education to the humanities?

- What does an experiment mean in different fields? Where and when does an experiment take place? How has computation extended practical scientific experiments?

- How does a network-type expansion of laboratory practice, very far removed from the traditional image of the experiment conducted in a closed room, change the nature of research in different fields? How does it alter the global dynamics of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities (e.g., the global reach of networked data, standardization of tools and methods)?

- How is a lab linked to industrialization and entrepreneurship? How does a lab become a nexus of collaboration between the university, government and nongovernment agencies, commercial industries, and citizens?

- How to design a collaborative lab? What are the barriers and obstacles to collaborative working (e.g., institutional, financial, ethical, research culture)? How can a lab facilitate collaborative practices (e.g., through open lab notebooks) and provide a better base for sharing of best practices between various disciplines?

- How do the humanities push the boundaries of a laboratory? What is a digital humanities lab? How does it reposition the humanities among the sciences, industry, and society?