WiSER welcomes Professor Richard Rottenburg

WiSER is delighted and honoured to announce that Professor Richard Rottenburg will join the Institute as Distinguished Professor of Science and Technology Studies from January 2019.
Professor Rottenburg has been awarded one of Wits University’s most Distinguished Professorships, and will spend six months of every year in residence at WISER.

Professor Rottenburg will work with and from WiSER to build a continent-wide focus on science and technology studies in Africa.  He is known internationally for his pathbreaking contributions to major intellectual areas of study which include postcolonial social theory and debates on deprovincializing Europe; the global interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies which has emerged at the intersection of sociology, philosophy, history, anthropology, feminist theory, and other disciplines; the revitalization of debates between anthropology and philosophy around issues of post-foundationalism and translation; and the rapidly developing social study of quantification and mathematical and computational knowledge systems, including machine learning and artificial intelligence – and their application to multiple questions of governmentality and knowledge production on the African continent. Amongst many other books, Professor Rottenburg is the author of Far Fetched Facts (MIT Press, 2009) and editor of The World of Indicators (Cambridge, 2015). His formidable contributions emerge from his deep investment in philosophical debates and at the same time his close and engaged working relationships with people and research sites across the African continent, including in the Nuba Mountains on the contested Sudanese border. He will greatly strengthen our research and institutional linkages with African and European institutions. Richard Rottenburg is a highly collegial presence as well as an experienced academic organiser and fund-raiser - and an always curious and careful researcher. 

We welcome Richard Rottenburg warmly to Wits and to WiSER and we look forward to building many new research platforms with him, as well as working with him to produce exciting new work from Johannesburg.