Christian Greiffenhagen (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)

In Model Cases, Monika Krause asks about the concrete material research objects behind shared conversations about classes of objects, periods, and regions in the social sciences and humanities. It is well known that biologists focus on particular organisms, such as mice, fruit flies, or particular viruses when they study general questions about life, development, and disease.  Krause shows that scholars in the social sciences and humanities also draw on some cases more than others, selecting research objects influenced by a range of ideological but also mundane factors, such as convenience, historicist ideas about development over time, schemas in the general population, and schemas particular to specific scholarly communities.    Some research objects are studied repeatedly and shape our understanding of more general ideas in disproportionate ways: The French Revolution has profoundly influenced our concepts of revolution, of citizenship, and of political modernity, just like studies of doctors have set the agenda for research on the professions. Based on an extensive analysis of the role of model cases in different fields, Krause argues that they can be useful for scholarly communities if they are acknowledged and reflected as particular objects; she also highlights the importance of research strategies based on neglected research objects and neglected combinations of research objects and scholarly concerns.    

Despite broad uptake, metascience and the Open Science reform movement have garnered ample criticism. Such criticism is also known as critical metascience. We will reflect on central critiques by bringing together key voices from a variety of disciplines, asking what needs to change, how and why?

Nature - Researchers and administrators are exploring ways to restructure a rigid hierarchy that can breed power abuses.

Berna Devezer (University of Idaho, United States)

Martin Reinhart & Felicitas Hesselmann (RMZ, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)