Susanne Wollin-Giering & Markus Hoffmann: Epistemic factors affecting the (dis)continuation of research with missing resources

Episode von RMZ Science Works von Robert K. Merton Zentrum für Wissenschaftsforschung · 10. Juni 2026 · 47 min

This talk discusses the possibilities of researchers to continue their work in situations where access to previously held resources is constrained. We start from the assumption that academic researchers rely on specific resources to be able to work. While many of these resources are usually provided by research organizations like universities, scientific communities remain the primary reference point for the work of researchers. The result is that some resources need to be acquired from elsewhere and that research can in some cases be continued without organizational support. The resulting situation is undertheorized by both organization and work studies (because they treat the full provision of resources for employees as a given and the content of work as unproblematic) and science studies (because of their focus on funding as the primary type of resource). We propose to fill this gap by treating the provision of resources as a variable on the one hand and by establishing a link between conditions of research, planned and conducted research processes, and necessary adaptions of researchers to changes in their conditions on the other hand.

We present results from interviews in projects investigating two situations where previously secured access to resources becomes constrained: the unemployment of researchers and the COVID-19 pandemic. The two situations can be compared through conceptualizing their effect on researchers as a change of access in resources. We focus on a comparison of two fields, plant biology and ethnology, to show how different career stages, the timing of research processes, and field-specificity impact the possibilities of researchers to continue working during these situations.

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