Research

Research at the professorship contributes to the Sociology of Technology and Science, Environmental Sociology, Micro-Sociology, as well as Science and Technology Studies (STS). We analyze, e.g., how lay people and experts use data and technology, how they cooperate to transform infrastructures (of traffic, information, and energy), and what it means to be "sustainable" or become "green."

Table of contents

    1. ​​Research Projects
    2. Publications by the Chair

​​Research Projects

Responsible Electronics in the Climate-Change Era (REC2)

Excellence Cluster, Speaker: Prof. Dr. Yana Vaynzof

Duration: 01.01.2026 - 31.12.2032
Funding: DFG

Infrastrukturelle Disuption? Energiewende und Wasserstoffversorgung in soziologischer Perspektive (InDis)

Foto Green Hydrogen Innovation Congress © Kristiane Fehrs

InDis studies the development of a hydrogen infrastructure in Saxony. The aim of the project is to develop an empirically based understanding of the coordinative dynamics associated with profound infrastructural changes in industrial energy supply. As efforts to implement a CO2-neutral hydrogen circular economy, the restructuring of infrastructures poses complex problems of cooperation and coordination. The project analyses how these problems, and their solutions, are attended to: Which logics or conventions are recurred upon in these negotiations and which strategic actors are involved in them, and how? Subject to negotiation is both the integration of technological innovations into existing infrastructure—as well as the justification of efforts, costs, and changes that infrastructural reconstruction entails. The project examines how the disruptive potential inherent in infrastructural restructuring is negotiated and, if necessary, contained. With the Saxon hydrogen economy (in its national and international interconnectedness) as its case, the project relies upon multi-sited ethnography, expert interviews, and practice transfer workshops.  

  • Duration: 42 months (01.07.2022-31.12.2025)
  • Principal investigator: Jun.-Prof. Susann Wagenknecht, PhD (sole PI)
  • The project is associated with the TUD research initiative on “Disruption and Societal Change” (TUDiSC) and (in preparation) with the Centre for Sustainability Assessment and Policy (PRISMA, contact: Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Günther, TUD/UNU-FLORES).
  • more information

Disruptions of networked privacy (DIPCY)

DIPCY investigates disruptions of privacy in the Internet of Things. The project aims to conceptually research on disruptions and disruptive changes both conceptually and empirically. The project focuses on privacy infringements involving third parties—infringements, we argue, that harbour a particularly high potential for disruption as they affect, disturb, or even destroy existing orders of privacy. Taking its cue from current privacy research, the project pursues a context-sensitive, relational, interdisciplinary, and methodologically plural approach. It combines sociological, communication, media and technology perspectives on privacy with cutting-edge research in computer science. Project partners interweave and complement subject-specific expertise by means of three studies, i.e., (1) an ethnographic situation analysis, (2) a semi-automatic content analysis, and (3) the development and evaluation of prototypes.

  • Duration: 48 months (01.09.2021-31.08.2025)
  • Principal investigators: JProf. Susann Wagenknecht, PhD, Dr. Johanna E. Möller (Communication Science, TUD), Dr. Stefan Köpsell (Privacy and Security, Computer Science, TUD), Prof. Dr. Sven Engesser (Communication Science, TUD)
  • Project staff, as of October 2022: Lukas Schmitz (work package 1/Wagenknecht), Katrin Etzrodt (work package 2), Stephan Escher (work package 3)
  • Note: The project is funded by the TUD excellence measure “Disruption and Societal Change”.

Publications by the Chair

38 Entries

2022

2020

2018

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Susann Wagenknecht
Last modified: May 13, 2026