The Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto is a home for critical and creative research on the politics of technoscience. As a cross-faculty research unit, the TRU is located at the Faculty of Information and jointly supported by the Faculty of Arts and Science, with its start in the Women and Gender Studies Institute. The TRU draws together social justice approaches to Science and Technology Studies from across the university.
The TRU membership is composed of postdoctoral fellows, research fellows, graduate students, and affiliated faculty.
Technoscience as a term follows a 20th century itinerary from Gaston Bachelard to Bruno Latour to Donna Haraway, from which it has been used to connect the study of scientific knowledge and laboratory practice with the politics of its worldly results in processes as diverse as militarization, feminism, and governance. The TRU aspires to build on this tradition of investigating the transformations and politics of technoscience in its implicated and surprising itineraries. Research at the TRU draws from diverse fields and critical traditions in its expansive sense of technoscience studies.
Funding for TRU research and activities has come from Connaught Global Challenge Award, SSHRC project grants, the McLuhan Centre, the Faculty of Information, the Faculty of Arts and Science, and the Provost’s Office. We acknowledge past support from the SSHRC Situating Science Network, New College, the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Institute for Science and Technology Studies at York.
Principal Investigator: Michelle Murphy