WTMC Spring Workshop 2026

At this workshop, we will explore the topic of disciplinarity and its various ‘others’. How have scientific disciplines emerged historically as organising principles of scientific work and how have their boundaries been contested and (re)drawn? How are disciplinary formations tied up with questions of ontology, epistemology and methodology, but also with questions of performativity, productivity, normativity and scholarly identity? Conversely, how are inter- and transdisciplinary efforts tied up with these very same questions? And what are the politics and conditions of (im)possibility, (un)desirability, (in)effectiveness for disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practice?

Next to these various questions about disciplinarity and its others as a research object, we will also explore questions about the (un)disciplinary underpinning of our own research practices. Considering our affiliation or proximity to STS, with its roots in the science and society movement that could be considered inter- or transdisciplinary from the outset, and which since then has arguably turned into something more discipline-like: how can we locate various enactments of STS within a complex and shifting research landscape? And how do we each position ourselves in relation to this shifting research landscape: taking our space within, outside or adjacent to STS, and forming as well as performing our own scholarly (or more-than-scholarly) identities?

These are the types of questions that we will explore during the upcoming WTMC Spring Workshop in May 2026. Bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds, we will discuss a variety of different theoretical and methodological lenses to study mono-, inter- and transdisciplinarity as a research object, but also to reflect on our scholarly identities and ways of engaging with the wider world.

Confirmed speakers include Roland Bal (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Sjang ten Hagen (Utrecht University), Lea Lösch (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Danielle Shanley (Maastricht University).