The Impact of Indicators (2012-2015)

(with Paul Wouters)

In this project, we (1) analyze the development, role and importance of performance indicators and research assessment procedures in biomedicine; (2) identify and analyse the effects of increasingly quantitative measurements of research and research performance on biomedical knowledge production; and (3) explore ways to strengthen positive effects while reducing negative ramifications. A more detailed description (including fieldsites) will be added at the start of a pilot project in the Spring of 2012.

Post-Doc project Network Realism (2009-2011)

(project leader: Anne Beaulieu)

In this project, researchers investigated ethnographically an aspect of visual culture called network realism, in order to understand how mediation and knowledge production are entwined in the use of databases of images. Four case studies formed the empirical component of this project, and were all sites where digital images on the web are used.

Leading questions for the post-doc research were: through which practices do images come to be things to be acted upon? How are these interactive practices learned by users and producers of databases of images? What is the place of this new kind of knowing in daily life and contemporary culture? The ethnographic study of interactions with databases provided insight into the specific ways in which users and producers come to know through networked images, in contrast to other forms of visual knowing.

PhD Thesis:

Regarding the Brain. Practices of Objectivity in Cerebral Imaging. 17th Century-Present.

What does a brain look like? What do we know about the brain? In Regarding the Brain, Sarah de Rijcke shows how the answers to these two questions have changed throughout the past centuries. She also demonstrates that the questions are linked: how we see the brain in drawings, on screen, through a microscope, or via a scanner, changes what we know about this organ.

De Rijcke’s historical cases span 400 years, ranging from 17^th century copper engravings to 21^st century brain scans. She analyzes how Thomas Willis, Christopher Wren, and other Royal Society members evaluated the accuracy of their engravings, and the effects of using pure alcohol as a preservative on their knowledge of the brain. She considers why photography did not replace the practice of drawing brains, after Jules-Bernard Luys published the first photographic neuroanatomical atlas in 1873; and explores how 19^th century developments in staining techniques changed what we know about brain cells. In addition, she describes how Santiago Ramón y Cajal and his peers translated complex microscopic observations into comprehensive drawings. What is more, she asks why brain scans are such appealing sources of knowledge, and discusses the role of interactivity in diffusion MRI. Across all cases, De Rijcke shows that scientific, technological, and material developments were inextricably tied to artistic, cultural, and social elements, in constituting the brain.