Helga Nowotny
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Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, Founding Member and Former President of the European Research Council. After a distinguished career at universities and research institutions in several European countries she continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at national, European and international level, among them as Member of the Board of Trustees, Falling Walls Foundation, Berlin; Vice-President of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings; Senior Fellow at the School of Transnational Governance, EUI, Florence; Member of the Council IEA de Paris; Member of the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development; Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna. She has received many awards and honorary doctorates including from the University of Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. She has published widely in Science and Technology Studies, STS, and on social time. Her latest book publications include ‘The Cunning of Uncertainty’ (2016) and ‘In AI We Trust’ (2021) which has since been translated into Italian, Spanish, Chinese and German. Currently Helga Nowotny is also working on the Food Socioscope. The Socioscope project develops a pioneering methodology to study societal transitions. It is a new way of doing social science research by making possible to collect thick data with multi-methods across continents, something that has rarely been applied when studying social phenomena.
In March 2026, she joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research topics
Social Studies of Science and Technology (STS), Science, Technology and Innovation Policy; Science and Society, Social Time, Risk, environment, sustainability, Epistemology and social organisation of social sciences and humanities, AI; Digital Humanism.
The Socioscope: on the relationship between micro- and meso-entities
So far, the Socioscope project has collected qualitative data about the activities of more than 600 local initiatives in 35 countries engaged in increasing sustainability in the domain of food. Deploying the ‘transaction grid’, i.e. mapping the interactions and relationships of each local initiative with other stakeholders in terms of who gives and receives what, soon made us realize the importance of entities at the meso-level: municipalities, NGOs, firms, consultancies, government programs and other coordinating bodies. This raises questions about their different modes of operation; their resources, strategies, motivations; and the impact they have.
The data collected so far (to be continued in 2026) in ‘Zones in Transition’ situated in geographies with different cultural, political and economic histories and in different present geopolitical contexts, allow us to pursue a more systemic approach to the questions raised above, as it enables the synthesis of the perspectives from different actors and their relationships. For instance, it turns out that the relationships between micro-and meso-entities in varying ‘Zones in Transition’ gives rise to the emergence of different notions of sustainability. If we want to understand how processes of transition occur, we must find out whether a multi-level approach is sufficient or whether are there better ways to conceptualize and operationalize the dynamics of the relationships between micro- and meso-entities. This will be the focus of her stay at Paris IAS.
Key publications
Nowotny, Helga, “The Re-Enchanted Universe of AI: the Place for Human Agency”, to be published in: Introduction to Digital Humanism, Editors: H. Werthner, C. Ghezzi, J. Kramer, J. Nida-Rümelin, B. Nuseibeh, E. Prem, A. Stanger, forthcoming 2023, Springer Nature.
Nowotny, Helga, “Digital Humanism – Navigating the Tensions Ahead” in H. Werthner, E. Prem, E. A. Lee, and C. Ghezzi (eds): Perspectives on Digital Humanism, Springer, 2022. (BibTeX).
Nowotny, Helga, “In AI We Trust. Power. Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms”, Polity Press; 2021 “Le macchine di Dio. Gli algoritmi predittivi e l'illusione del controllo”, LUISS University Press, 2022 ; “La fe en la inteligencia artificial. Los algoritmos predictivos y el futuro de la humanidad”, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2022, 未來的錯覺, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2023; “Die KI sei mit euch. Macht, Illusion und Kontrolle algorithmischer Vorhersage”, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2023.
Nowotny, Helga, “The Illusion of Control: Living with digital Others” to be published in: “The Illusion of Control: Living with the digital Others”, in Global Perspectives, special issue “illusion of Control” 2023, (S.E. van der Leeuw, V. Galaz, J.-W. Vasbinder, ed
 Online conference by Helga Nowotny (ETH Zurich, ERC), fellow for a one-month writing residency at the Paris IAS as part of the "Paris IAS Ideas" series. Open to the public, registration required. |
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