Kristin Asdal

Kristin Asdal trained as a historian and is currently professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. She has consistently been working across the social sciences and humanities and published in journals like History and Theory, British Journal of Sociology, Social Studies of Science, Accounting, Organizations and Society, the Journal of Cultural Economy and several interdisciplinary textbooks. Such encounters across disciplines spurred Kristin’s research on practice-oriented document-analysis, her interest in what documents can do, and how to be inventive with document-methods that can work across the humanities and social sciences.

In her empirical research, Kristin combines the study of politics and administration with an interest in the sociology of knowledge – and she explores how different knowledge practices, most notably natural science and economics, inform political work and issues. She has pursued her analyses in a wide array of areas, such as environmental politics, controversies over whaling, the bioeconomy and the domestication of new species. Her recent comprehensive research-project The Good Economy and the Little Tools of Valuation, funded by the European Research Council, enabled her to further her interest in documents as 'little tools' that may each and one of them be small in size, but which together are key to large machineries and have a huge impact. Doing Document Analysis (SAGE, 2021) is the result of a longstanding cooperation with Hilde Reinertsen on exactly such issues. Kristin is currently working on a monograph with Bård Hobæk on paperwork and democracy in parliamentary procedure.