dr. MH (Mareike) Smolka

Mareike Smolka is Assistant Professor in the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation group at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and a research fellow at the Human Technology Center at RWTH Aachen University. In her research, she engages in inter-/transdisciplinary collaborations and different types of ethnographic fieldwork to study which role responsible innovation and ethical considerations can and could play in science and engineering. Her research areas are science & technology studies (STS), responsible innovation, and empirical ethics. She has also gained experience in conference studies, the sociology of emotions, and, more recently, transition studies.

She currently teaches a course on Innovation and Transformation at WUR. She previously taught research methods, an introduction to STS, and philosophy of science to multidisciplinary student groups, including students in natural science and software engineering degrees. Her teaching is inspired by problem-based learning and interactive workshop formats. She has given workshops on Socio-Technical Integration Research, a method for conducting Socratic dialogues about the societal dimensions of science and technology development, in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and the United States, drawing on her extensive research experience with the method. 

Next to her research and teaching activities, she works as Associate Editor for the Journal of Responsible Innovation and has been actively involved in the German-speaking STS community, for example by co-initiating and co-organizing the STS-hub.de conference series. 

For up-to-date information about Mareike Smolka's activities, publications, and projects, please check her  https://mareikesmolka.carrd.co/

Students can find her thesis topics

• For Bachelor  Emotions in science and Systemic approaches to Responsible Innovation
• For Master  Building capacities for socio-technical imagination and How do researchers understand, experience and practice responsibility?