Ruth Falkenberg BSc., MA.

Researcher

Research Platform “Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice”
T: +43 1 4277 26103
Email



Biography

Ruth Falkenberg is a PhD student and research assistant at the Research Platform “Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in Academic Practice”. Together with Maximilian Fochler and Lisa Sigl she works in the Valuing, Being and Knowing in Research Practices. In this project, they accompany three research groups from the academic life sciences for more than two years in order to investigate how valuation practices and processes of subjectification are entangled with strategic decisions in the researchers’ work.

In her PhD project Ruth thus pursues her broader interest in cultures of knowledge production and in valuation practices in academia. In particular, she is interested in how such valuation practices are affected by the changing living and working conditions in academia under the increasing influence of neoliberal forms of governance, and how this in turn affects academic knowledge production.

In June 2019, Ruth has completed the master programme Science, Technology, and Society at the university of Vienna. In her master thesis she has dealt with valuations in medical yoga research. In doing so, she has focused on the situated valuations that researchers perform in negotiating the encounter between yoga and biomedicine theoretically and methodologically, as well as on how these concrete valuations are influenced by broader institutional, structural, and discursive regimes of valuation.

Publications

Showing entries 1 - 11 out of 11
Falkenberg R, Sigl L, Fochler M. Orientation work: caring for the relevance of research to social-environmental problems. Science as Culture. 2025 Jul 21. doi: 10.1080/09505431.2025.2531747

Falkenberg RI, Sigl L, Fochler M. From ‘making lists’ to conducting ‘well-rounded’ studies: Epistemic re-orientations in soil microbial ecology. Social Studies of Science. 2024 Feb;54(1):78-104. Epub 2023. doi: 10.1177/03063127231179700

Falkenberg R, Fochler M. Innovation in Technology Instead of Thinking? Assetization and Its Epistemic Consequences in Academia. Science, Technology & Human Values. 2024 Jan;49(1):105-130. Epub 2022 Dec 5. doi: 10.1177/01622439221140003

Sigl L, Falkenberg R, Fochler M. Changing articulations of relevance in soil science: Diversity and (potential) synergy of epistemic commitments in a scientific discipline. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. 2023 Feb;97:79-90. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.12.004

Falkenberg RI, Fochler M, Sigl L, Bürstmayr H, Eichorst S, Michel S et al. The breakthrough paradox: How focusing on one form of innovation jeopardizes the advancement of science. EMBO Reports. 2022 Jul 5;23(7):e54772. doi: 10.15252/embr.202254772

Falkenberg RI. Re-invent Yourself! How Demands for Innovativeness Reshape Epistemic Practices. Minerva. 2021 Jun 8;59(4):423–444. doi: 10.1007/s11024-021-09447-4

Falkenberg RI. Yoga and immune system functioning: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 2018 Aug;41(4):467-482. doi: 10.1007/s10865-018-9914-y

Showing entries 1 - 11 out of 11