Stöckelova, Tereza | Czech Republic

My field of research is environmental conflicts and democracy: social mobilisation, articulation of knowledge in decision-making and participatory governance. I deal with STS both theoretically and methodologically.

I graduated in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague with an MA thesis titled "Nature as a Collective Experiment: The Case of Management of Ips Typographus in the National Park Sumava". The thesis, first, is a case study of a controversy about the management of the bark beetle Ips typographus in the National Park Sumava in the Southern Bohemia.

The study is based on qualitative analysis of public as well as private texts, interviews and correspondence. Second, it offers an interpretation of the controversy from the STS perspective. The notion of nature as an independent kind of reality exterior to society is challenged together with some environmentalists’ arguments based on this premise. Some important aspects of the engagement of scientists are also examined. Finally, the thesis explores alternatives to the current style of the controversy; it mainly tries to redefine the role of expert knowledge. I have worked as a member of the editiorial boards of two journals for a number of years: "Cargo", a journal for social and cultural anthropology, and "Biograf", a sociological journal focused on qualitative research.

2002-2003 I held seminars for sociology students on phenomenological sociology and on the work of Michel Foucault

2003-2004 I have held an MA introductory course of environmental sociology for students in social ecology.

At the same time I have also been involved in the EU funded international research project "Analysing public accountability procedures in contemporary European contexts" which investigates opportunity spaces and forms of participation of experts, politicians and the public in environmental controversies.

Project at IAS-STS: Introduction of GMO in the Czech Republic: Localisation of a Global Controversy

My doctoral research in progress - which I am planning to finalise during my stay in Graz - focuses on expert and political controversy about genetically modified organisms in the Czech republic and the EU. The starting point of my research is an interest in how the global controversy over GMOs finds its way to the Czech republic - or better, hardly finds its way, as the basic observation is that although we have got all the principal actors and activities related to GMO - industry, research and interested scientists, environmental NGOs etc. - we are still lacking the controversy or public mobilisation known in Western Europe.

My dissertation principally develops the following four issues. 1/ The problematic status of expert knowledge that is often used as depoliticising framework of public debate and decision-making, but at the same time itself readliy becomes politicised throughout the controversy. 2/ The multiple and ambiguous influence of the EU on expert and political debate and decision-making in the CR as an accession country. 3/ The effects of formalised public participation procedures on decision-making, the dynamics of conflict and different actors involved. 4/ Socio-technological geography of GMO, i.e. different ways of expanding the technology (e.g. patent system, the concept of coexistence, contamination) and various attempts to block this expansion (e.g. consumer boycotts, political moratoria, GM-free zones, destructions of field trials).

Apart from these thematic orientations, there is a transversal focus in my research on the role of social scientists and academic discourses in the development related to GMO and in the formation of the new doctrine of participatory governance in the EU.