Building connections: stabilising academic-industrial infrastructures in the GEIC - Accepted on the 'Infrastructural Life' Panel

Keywords: Infrastructure, Architecture, Laboratories, Science, Technology
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 75

Abstract

That the production of scientific knowledge and technologies necessarily requires the creation and maintenance of networks has been a key insight of STS studies (Latour, 1987) and, more recently, these socio-material networks have been described through the lens of infrastructure (Edwards, 2010; Bowker, 2018). In the context of the ‘knowledge economy’, in which academic research is increasingly entangled with industrial production, universities are undertaking a radical reshaping of the infrastructures they draw upon to create knowledge.
This paper argues that the increased pressure on universities to engage in industry-led research is bringing forth new architectural and infrastructural typologies. The paper draws on an ethnographic study of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester, a facility specifically designed to ‘bridge the gap’ between the worlds of academia and industry in the creation of technologies enabled by the nanomaterial graphene. Through following the work of engineers in the facility, the paper will argue that architecture and spatial configurations play an active role in accelerating the flow of scientific knowledge, reframed as an industrial commodity, from the laboratory to the factory.

References:
Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Edwards, P. N. (2010). A Vast Machine. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: MIT Press.
Bowker, G. C. (2018). Sustainable Knowledge Infrastructures. In N. Anand, A. Gupta, & H. Appel (Eds.), The Promise of Infrastrucutre (p. 256). Durham and London: Duke University Press.