Epistemology, Activism, and Entanglement - Rethinking Knowledge Production

Abstract

Nina Lykke is Professor Emerita at the Unit of Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden.She has been an engaged feminist researcher, educator, and activist since the 1970s, duringwhich time she has developed important critiques of epistemologies in science and technology.She has covered topics as diverse as the space race, reproductive technologies, cancer, and death.Lykke has published widely in both Scandinavia and internationally within the field of feministcultural studies of technoscience. Her most well-known publications within the area include themonographies Cosmodolphins (2000) co-authored with Mette Bryld, and Kønsforskning (2008)(in Engl: Feminist Studies (2010)), as well as the edited volumes Between Monsters, Goddessesand Cyborgs (1996) co-edited with Rosi Braidotti, Bits of Life (2008) with Anneke Smelik, andAssisted Reproduction Across Borders (2017) with Merete Lie. She has been pivotal in establishingthe Unit of Gender Studies at Linköping University, with which she has been affiliated sincethe unit’s inauguration in 1999. She has played a major role in the development of the PhDprogramme in interdisciplinary gender studies at Linköping University, which has a strong profilewithin feminist STS. In 2007, she started the Center of Gender Excellence GEXcel, initiallyfunded by The Swedish Research Council, Vetenskapsrådet, and later by the participating Universities,Linköping University, Örebro University, and Karlstad University, Sweden. She has alsobeen the director of the Nordic Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 2004-2009,and from 2008-2017 she was the director of InterGender, the Swedish-International ResearchSchool in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. We met with Nina Lykke in Copenhagen, in orderto let her unfold how her own interest in Feminist STS/Feminist Technoscience Studiesemerged, and how she has put feminist cultural studies of technoscience to work from the1980’s until today, through research, teaching, and activism.