STS in Lausanne: An overview

Since the mid 1990’s, STS development in Lausanne is an ongoing process, and the study of science and technology is nowadays well established in our university. It includes several teachers and researchers active in different fields, such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy and history. Therefore, there are increasing opportunities for students and scholars, but also for a broad audience, to get involved in STS through the numerous lectures and researches and also thanks to very active mediation structures. Some of them are briefly introduced here as an illustration of our broad offering.

Teaching As far as teaching is concerned, many lectures are currently provided at both undergraduate and graduate levels, mainly in The Faculty of Social and Political Sciences and The Faculty of Biology and Medicine. While some of them are clearly tagged STS, others are STS topics introduced in general teaching. For instance, Farinaz Fassa teaches Methodology in social sciences, and she uses her main field of interest - technology and education / gender and technology - as the general background for her teaching. In 2007, part of these lectures will be included in a new MA degree on “Health, Science and Medicine” provided by the The Faculty of Social and Political Sciences for students in social sciences.

This attractive and challenging new option will include lectures and seminars on the socio-historical construction processes of science and medicine, given by Francesco Panese under the name “Social studies of science and medicine”. To give an idea of the content, in this year’s lectures, he presents different “histories of knowledge” (e.g. emergence of modern science, anatomy, madness, transparent and genomic body, brain, fœtus). The seminar deals with “the fabric of the human as a scientific and medical object”.

A gender perspective will be developed by Cynthia Kraus who is already in charge of an interdisciplinary gender seminar on the clinic of intersexuality in collaboration with psychiatrists, psychologists, surgeons, paediatricians, and intersex activists; and an introduction to science and gender studies for BSc students in The Faculty of Biology and Medicine. In the new MA, she will teach a course on gender, science, sexualities and the body.

As another example of what will be included in the new MA, Daniela Cerqui will teach in the field of “anthropology of the body and technology”. Deeply rooted in her research in collaboration with the first man to have an implant directly connected to his nervous system, her lecture will be about implants, robotics and the so-called converging technologies, and the way they redefine what it means to be human. Also involved in this forthcoming MA, The Institute for History of Medicine and Public Health (IUHMSP, director: Vincent Barras), which is part of The Faculty of Biology and Medicine, hosts teachings in history and social studies of medicine and life sciences, currently mainly addressed to medical students.

Finally, apart from this degree, the University of Lausanne also provides an introductory course on STS (taught by Bruno Strasser, a historian from The Faculty of Arts working on the biomedical sciences in the 20th century) at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, as part of the humanities teaching program for engineering students.

Research The research centre « Observatoire Science, Politique et Société » (OSPS; director: Jean-Philippe Leresche) analyses the changing characteristics of higher education institutions, production of knowledge and dissemination processes. It also promotes public debate with an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective (See http://www.unil.ch/osps). The OSPS runs a certificate on Higher education and research policy in collaboration with the University of Bern. It features themes such as research promotion, assessment, innovation systems and technology policies and knowledge engineering (See http://www.unil.ch/osps/page18692.html).

The IUHMSP has set up a new interdisciplinary Neuroscience research group that brings together PhD students and researchers working on historical and contemporary features of the neuroscience and the process of biomedicalisation of psychiatry. Their interests focus on techniques, concepts, illnesses and processes such as neuroimaging, plasticity, the inconscient, and the “corticalisation” of mental illness and subject categories. This Institute has a rich library and resource centre on the history, the philosophy and the social science of medicine and on ethics and public health. Archives, medical instruments and iconographic collections are also part of it (See: http://www.chuv.ch/iuhmsp).

Communicating and sharing with the public In Lausanne, two central institutions are devoted to the mediation of scientific and medical cultures towards the public: The Fondation Claude Verdan and The Science-Society Interface.

With thoughtful, ambitious and entertaining exhibitions, the Fondation Claude Verdan (director: Francesco Panese) promotes critical understanding of recent developments and issues related to biomedical, technological and scientific innovations. The current exhibition, for instance, is exploring the complex ways babies get “made” (Du baiser au bébé, see http://www.verdan.ch).

Within the University of Lausanne, The Science-Society Interface (director: Alain Kaufmann) is a department that promotes public awareness and critical dialogue on science and technology. It works in collaboration with different actors, including science museums, schools, researchers, the STS community and the public at large. Moreover, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, it co-ordinates the “Réseau Romand Science et Cité”, a network of 30 museums, science centres and universities that develop common initiatives. The Science-Society Interface recently established a public biology laboratory inspired by STS, open to schools and the general public: L´Eprouvette (The Test Tube). The Interface conducts interdisciplinary research on technological risks (GMOs, nanotechnology) and the involvement of civil society in science and technology issues (participatory Technology Assessment, technical democracy). It also contributes to different courses in the fields of science studies (See: http://www.unil.ch/interface).