WTMC - Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture
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WTMC Graduate Program

The Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC) is a collective effort of Dutch scholars studying aspects of the development of science, technology and modern culture. Science and technology studies form the core of the work, but there are also strong inputs from philosophy, cultural studies and innovation studies.

The activities of the School are twofold: 1) the Graduate Research School co-ordinates and stimulates research in the field of science and technology studies, innovation studies and cultural analysis of science and technology; 2) the Graduate School provides advanced training for PhD candidates. In the Netherlands, such Graduate Research Schools are an officially recognised element of the academic landscape. This brochure is meant specifically for those interested in the training programme.

Sign up for the full WTMC PhD training program

Send an e-mail to [email protected] indicating your interest in the full training program and we will guide you through the registration process!

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Read all about the WTMC Graduate Program below!

History

Some collaborative training for graduate students in science, technology and society studies started in 1986, and was supported by a government grant till the early 1990s. Over the years, the graduate training network gained national and international recognition. In 1994, the graduate training network was transformed into a slightly different organisation: the Graduate Research School Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). The Graduate School has been officially accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 1995, and accreditation was reconfirmed in 2000.

Organisation

At present, the scientific director of the school is Prof. Dr. Esther Turnhout from University of Twente. Prof. Dr. Ir. Harro van Lente, from Maastricht University, chairs the board, consisting of members mostly drawn from participating academic groups.

The coordination of the training programme is in the hands of Dr. Andreas Weber, University of Twente and Dr. Alexandra Supper Maastricht University.

Participating Institutions

University of Amsterdam, Maastricht University, University of Groningen, University of Twente, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Leiden, Utrecht University, Virtual Knowledge Studio / e-Humanities Group (KNAW), Technical University Eindhoven, Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Rathenau Institute.

Research clusters

WTMC is organised around three clusters of questions. These also form the backbone of the training programme. Beside these clusters of questions, the Graduate School also pays attention to its founding disciplines, such as history, philosophy and sociology.

Diagnosis of the Modern Research System
This cluster focuses on the history of national research systems; and on the relationships between the different levels of the research system, system more generally and between science and society. The formation of new networks, systems and actors is a key aspect within this theme. This is studied from historical, sociological and cultural approaches perspectives, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Technological Development and Societal Regulation
This cluster focuses on the role of technology in society and the way in which they co-construct each other. How do technical systems and technical artefacts emerge and develop, what is their role in modern society? These studies inform new perspectives on the politics of technological culture and new forms of technology assessment. The history of technology in the Netherlands has been an important topic.

Cultural Roles of Science, Technology and Rationality
This cluster focuses on the cultural, philosophical and normative consequences of the intertwinement of science, technology and modern culture. Questions related to this theme concentrate on the way in which boundaries between science, technology and society are generated, and how science and technology are represented and presented in philosophy and political writings.

The Graduate Training Programme

Aims of the Graduate Training

  • To get an overview of classical and contemporary approaches to the study of the relation between science, technology and society.
  • To learn how to translate these insights into one’s own research approach and research design.
  • To obtain insight into the relationship between current STS studies and disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and history.
  • To develop skills to use methodology and theory to study the relation between science, technology and society.
  • To develop skills necessary to communicate with and present one’s work to the international research community.
  • To develop skills to translate societal and cultural problems into questions of science and technology studies and vice versa.
  • To prepare for a professional career in which knowledge of the relations between science technology and society plays a role.

Local and National Component

PhD students who belong to one of the academic groups affiliated with WTMC obtain their training locally in their own institution and nationally from the Graduate Research School. The local component is provided by the local institution and in particular by the supervisor responsible for the PhD student. The local component includes supervision and the training to compensate for gaps in the students’ academic background. The national component is organised by the Graduate Research School WTMC. Central to goal of the national component is to familiarise students with the classical and recent theories and with methodology and approaches to study the interaction between science, technology and society, and to stimulate interaction and learning among the PhD students of the school.

Workshops, Summer Schools & Writeshops

The PhD graduate programme consist of two parts: The first two years of the programme introduce students into the broad field of studies of the relationship between science, technology and society, and train particular skills. During each of these first two years, students attend two workshops and one summer school. Workshops are organised around specific themes (linked to the three clusters of questions around which WTMC is organised), while the summer school is organised around both a theme and an anchor teacher (for examples see themes of workshops and anchor teachers of previous schools).

For workshops and summer schools students receive a reader with texts, well in advance and usually an assignment, to prepare in advance before the actual workshop or summer school. We expect students to prepare 40 hours for each workshop and 80 hours for the summer school. Workshops and summer schools are conducted in English and attract international participants.

In the next phase of their PhD research, students are expected to present their own written work for discussion at writeshops.
Writeshops are held twice each year, once in the spring and once in the autumn. Students comment on each other’s work-in-progress and one or two senior discussants are invited. Texts are distributed in advance. The amount of preparation depends on the number of participants.

The development of general academic and professional skills is important in the WTMC graduate training programme. Workshops and summer schools invite students to reflect critically on theoretical and methodological approaches and on their own research design and findings. Interaction among the students is important which is why workshops and summer schools are residential.
In addition to a selection of research skills (such as textual analysis, network analysis, and ethnographic techniques), there is training in general skills (like how to structure the thesis, writing review articles, and writing research proposals for funding).

Sign up for the full WTMC PhD training programme

Send an e-mail to [email protected] indicating your interest in the full training program and we will guide you through the registration process!

Download WTMC Training and Supervision Program

Examples of Themes of Workshops:

    • Normativity
    • Heterogeneous practices of Knowledge Production
    • Utopianism, Postmodernism and cultural critique

Anchor Speakers of Previous Summer- and Winter Schools:

Donald MacKenzie (1987), Harry Collins (1988), Roy Porter (1989), Helga Nowotny (1990), Steve Shapin (1991), Bruno Latour (1992), Brian Wynne (1993), John Law (1994), Trevor Pinch (1995), Karin Knorr-Cetina & Ted Porter (1996), Donna Haraway (1997), Sheila Jasanoff (1998) Tom Gieryn (2000), Aant Elzinga (2001), Steve Woolgar (2002), Lucy Suchman (2003), Andrew Webster (2004), Tom Misa (2005), Susan Leigh Star (2006), Steven Yearley (2007), Andrew Feenberg (2008), David Nye (2009). Michael Lynch (2010), Geoffrey Bowker (2011), Helen Verran (2012), Steven Epstein (2013), Gary Downey (2014), Mark Brown (2015), Ulrike Felt (2016), Christine Hine (2017), Elizabeth Shove (2018), Michael Guggenheim (2019) and Pierre-Benoît Joly (2021).

Past workshops and summer schools

2020

Workshop June 2020

Period: 22 – 24 June

Theme: Care as Concept, Method, Ethic

2019

Workshop May 2019

Period: 8-10 May

Theme: Post-Colonial

Summer School 2019

Period: 26-30 August

Theme: Experimenting, or Trying to Change the World with STS

Anchor teacher: Michael Guggenheim

Workshop November 2019

Period: 18-20 November 2019

Theme: Open Science

2018

Workshop May 2018

Period: 2-4 May 2018

Theme: Practising Comparison

Summer School 2018

Period: 27-31 August 2018

Theme: Infrastructures

Anchor teacher: Elizabeth Shove

Workshop December 2018

Period: 17-19 December 2018

Theme: Smart

2017

Workshop May 2017

Period: 1-3 May 2017

Theme: STS and Art

Summer School 2017

Period: 4-8 September 2017

Theme: Ethnography, Digital Objects, and STS

Anchor teacher: Christine Hine

Workshop December 2017

Period: 18-20 December 2017

Theme: (Re)inventing Responsibility and Innovation

2016

Workshop April 2016

Period: 13-15 April 2016

Theme: Foucault’s Legacy

Summer School August 2016

Period: 22-26 August 2016

Theme: Time and STS

Anchor teacher: Ulrike Felt

Workshop December 2016

Period: 7-9 December 2016

Theme: … AND COUNTING, Quantitative Research in and about STS

2015

Workshop April 2015

Period: 22-24 April 2015

Theme: Robots

Summer School August 2015

Period: 24-28 August 2015

Theme: Politics of Scinece, Technology and STS

Anchor teacher: Mark Brown

Autumn Workshop 2015

Period: 21-23 October 2015

Theme: Future-Making

2014

Workshop April 2014

Period: 15-17 April 2014

Theme: Drawing the Line: Fraud and the Boundaries of Science

Summer School July 2014

Period: 7 -11 July 2014

Theme: What is STS for? What are STS scholars for?

Anchor teacher: Gary Downey

Workshop October 2014

Period: 22-24 October 2014

Theme: Language’s Others

2013

Workshop April 2013

Period: 10-12 April 2012

Thema: The nature of nature

Summer School August 2013

Anchor teacher: Steven Epstein, Northwestern University, Chicago

Period: 26-30 August 2013

Theme: Participation and the politics of difference

Workshop November 2013

Period: 6-8 November 2013

Theme: Publics, problems and technology

2012

Workshop April 2012

Period: 25-27 April 2012

Thema: Normativity as object and as Practice

Workshop June 2012

Period: 13-16 June 2012

Theme: Science and Citizenship

Summer School August 2012

Anchor teacher: Helen Verran, University of Melbourne

Period: 22-26 August 2011

Theme: Seeing through numbers

Workshop Fall 2012

Period: 31 October – 2 November 2012

Theme: Assessing technology assessment

2011

Workshop February 2011

Period: 16-18 February 2011
Theme: STS goes mental

Workshop April 2011

Period: 27-29 April 2011
Theme: Models and simulations

Summer School August 2011

Anchor teacher: Geoffrey Bowker, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

Period: 22-26 August 2011
Theme: Values and infrastructures at play

2010

Workshop January 2010

Period: 27-29 January 2010

Theme: Technology in surveillance society

Workshop April 2010

Period: 7-9 April 2010
Theme: Safety cultures and responsibility citizens

Summer School August 2010

Anchor teacher: Michael Lynch, Professor Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University

Period: 16-20 August 2010
Theme: Observing experts observing

Workshop October 2010

Period: 13-15 October 2010
Theme: Research for development

2009

Workshop January 2009

Period: 28-30 January 2009
Theme: The politics of scientific quality

Workshop April 2009

Period: 1 – 3 April 2009

Summer School August 2009

Networks of Energy and Culture
Anchor teacher: Professor David Nye, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Period: 24-28 August 2009

2008

Workshop January 2008 – Normativity as object and as practice

Period: 30 January – 1 February 2008
Theme: Normativity as object and as practice

Workshop May 2008 – Citation Cultures

Period: 21 – 23 May 2008
Theme: Citation cultures

Summer School August 2008

Anchor teacher: Professor Andrew Feenberg, from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

Period: 25-29 August 2008
Theme: A critical theory of technology

2007

Workshop in February 2007

Period: 7-9 February 2007
Theme: Technology and democracy

Workshop in May 2007

Period: 9 – 11 May 2007
Theme: Techno scientific futures: seeing risks and creating Utopias

Summer School 2007

Anchor teacher: Steven Yearley, University of Edinburgh

Period: 10 – 14 September 2007
Theme: Engagement, environment & epistemological eggs

2006

Workshop May 2006

Period: 17-19 May 2006
Theme: User-producer relations in technology

Summer school September 2006

Anchor teacher: Professor Susan Leigh Star, Santa Clara University
Period: 4 – 8 September 2006
Theme: Standars, categories and boundary objects: Work in the production of knowledge and technology

Autumn school in October 2006

Period: 5 October 2006

2005

WTMC Summer School 2005

Anchor teacher: Professor Thomas J. Misa, Illinois Institute of Technology

Period: 15 – 19 augustus 2005

2004

WTMC Summer School 2004

Anchor teachter: Professor Andrew Webster, University of York

Period: 6- 10 September 2004

Theme: Science policy and the dynamics of knowledge and (health) innovation

As from 2018 the programmes of WTMC workshops and summer schools can be downloaded at the WTMC Series page.

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WTMC Events

  • Summer School WTMC 2023
    WTMC Summer School – ‘The afterlives of ecocide: ecological relations in times of war’
  • WTMC Spring Workshop 8-10 April 2024 “Endangered Futures”
    WTMC Spring Workshop – ‘Routines and Disruptions’
  • WTMC Writeshop 8 April 2025

Download WTMC Brochure

Download the WTMC Brochure to find out more about the training programme of the Graduate Research School.

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About WTMC

Netherlands Graduate School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture.

WTMC is a collective effort of scholars based in the Netherlands who study the development of science, technology and modern culture from an interdisciplinary perspective.

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Participating Institutions

  • University of Amsterdam
  • University of Groningen
  • Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW)
  • Rathenau Institute
  • Radboud University Nijmegen
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam

Establishing Institutions

  • Maastricht University
  • University of Twente
  • University of Utrecht
  • Eindhoven University of Technology
  • VU University Amsterdam
  • Leiden University
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