What kinds of practical and epistemic work are required to draw together different kinds of data, people, and evidence? This talk examines 'interoperability' by tracing the history of three AIDS cohort studies that, over three decades, were gradually merged into a single research network. Today, with a double-click, researchers can combine data collected from gay and bisexual men in the 1980s with materials gathered from women in the North of the US beginning in the 1990s and in the South of the US in the 2010s—data that remain scientifically comparable. Yet today's apparent ease reveals next to nothing about the political protests and scientific disputes that made such comparability possible. The interoperability of these AIDS research data rests on decades of negotiation over how blood, data, and human participants could be rendered equivalent.
| When? | 22.06.2026 12:00 - 14:00 |
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| Where? | University of Lausanne |
| speaker | Presentation: David Ribes is professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) and director of the Science, Technology and Society Studies (STSS) program at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a sociologist of science and technology who focuses on the development and sustainability of research infrastructures; their relation to long-term changes in the conduct of science; and, transformations in objects of research. David is a regular contributor to the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Information Studies. His methods are ethnographic, archival-historical and comparative. See davidribes.com or dataecologi.es for more.
Discussant: Anna Jobin is an assistant professor at the Human-ISTInstitute at the University of Fribourg. She leads the research group SAIS dedicated to the social Studies of Algorithms, Internet, & Society. |
| Contact | Laboratoire d’étude des sciences et des techniques (STS Lab, UNIL), Laboratory for the History of Science and Technology (EPFL), STS-CH |
| More on | Website |