Dr. rer. soc. Melike Şahinol
e-Mail: sahinol AT oiist.org
Research Fellow, head of the research field “Human, Medicine, and Society” at the Orient-Institut Istanbul (Turkey), which is an independent turcological and regional scientific research institute of the Max Weber Foundation (Germany).
Guest Researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany).
Co-founder and co-coordinator of the Turkish Scholarly Network for Science and Technology Studies (STS TURKEY).
Studied sociology, political science, and psychology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, I received my doctorate in 2015 in sociology at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen. Sponsored by a three-year scholarship at the DFG Research Training Group Bioethics at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, I examined practices and techniques of Neuroscience, in particular Brain-Computer Interfaces in patients with chronical stroke. With the context of my PhD project, I was involved in several international research projects in Neuroscience and Neurotechnolgy and have conducted ethnographic studies in hospitals, laboratories, and during various brain surgeries. I have received several fellowships, including one in the program “Science, Technology and Society” (STS) at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Recently, I have co-initiated the founding of the network STS TURKEY.
Ongoing Research Projects
– Additive Manufacturing: Enabling Technologies in the Childhood (ETeC)
– Digital Health Data between Social Inclusion and Social Robustness (VALID)
– Neuroenhancement: Practices and Techniques (NEPTurkey)
– Blurred Boundaries of Assistive Reproduction Technologies (B.B.ART)
– Continuation or New Beginning? Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and
Technology Assessment (TA)
Research interests
– Science and Technology Studies (in particular the development and use of innovative medical technologies and their consequences)
– Sociology of the body, Human Enhancement, cultural forms of self-expressivity, transformations of the human body (socio-bio-technical adaptations and ensembles)
– Bio(technology)policy in Turkey, economies of life and the impact of biogeopolitics
– Social conditions of the emergence and implementation of new technologies and the question of forms of change in social relationships and social processes through (bio)technical practices
– Practices and processes in knowledge networks (currently: Makerspaces and Do-It-Yourself as drivers of innovation)
The human as techno-cerebrally operating form – this study shows the adaptation of human and machine in neuroscience and describes the acting of a cyborg:
Reviewer / Board Member activities
Reviewer activities for following academic journals: Journal for Medical Anthropology, Medical Humanities, NanoEthics – Studies of New and Emerging Technologies, INSIST-Proceedings (Interdisciplinary Network for Studies Investigating Science and Technology)
Extended Editorial Board member of Diyâr, the Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies
