Noortje Marres is a sociologist and episodic philosopher based in the United Kingdom. She has published two single-authored books – Material Participation (2012) and Digital Sociology (2017) – and is currently completing a third on Tech Trials in Society.
Noortje is a Professor in Science, Technology and Society (STS) in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. She is also an external faculty member in the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Professor at the University of Siegen (Germany) affiliated with the Media of Cooperation Research Programme.
Noortje studied Sociology and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Amsterdam, and conducted her doctoral research at that same university and at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole des Mines (Paris). Her work investigates issues at the intersection of innovation, politics, environment and everyday life: problems of participation in technological societies; the role of mundane objects in contemporary democracy (“material publics”); living experiments; the changing relations between social science and social life in a digital age. Her research has also contributed to social research methodology, in particular issue mapping and situational analytics, and the development of creative forms of inquiry between the social sciences, computing and the arts.
Her PhD Thesis, No Issue, No Public (2005) outlines an issue-oriented concept of public participation in technological societies, drawing on American pragmatism and Actor-Network Theory. Her first book, Material Participation : Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics (2012/2015) develops a theory of material publics based on field study of sustainable living initiatives. Her most recent single-authored book, Digital Sociology (Polity, 2017) outlines a critical and creative approach to researching digital societies, and argues that the relations between social research and social life are changing in a digital age. I am currently setting up new research on societal testing of intelligent technologies.
Before joining the University of Warwick, Noortje was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, Unversity of London, where I also directed the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP). Between 2009 and 2011, she was a Fellow in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Oxford, in the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (INSIS). She has been a visiting fellow at the Berlin Social Science Centre (2014), and have made study visits to the New School for Social Research (New York) and to TIK, the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, at the University of Oslo.
