Yesterday our colleague Eefje de Louw attended the STS-NL 2026 conference at the University of Twente, track "infrastructures of knowing". Here are her reflections:
"What a cultivating few days! I'm still buzzing with the excitement over meeting new faces and catching up with familiar ones.
This was my first introduction to the STS research field and UTwente did a wonderful job at making me feel welcome. In particular, great thanks to Fran Meissner for notifying me on the conference and for introducing me to your colleagues. I always find it very commendable when more experienced researchers look out for the younger ones, while still being able to recognize that finding your place in academia can be quite a challenging and overwhelming experience.
I got the opportunity to present my work in progress in the track on 'infrastructures of knowing', chaired by Andrea Kottmann. After my presentation I received a lot of recognition and some useful nuances that I will follow up on in my analysis. Together with colleagues at Clappform, we continue to try to understand how contextualized knowledge is created and what to do with epistemic tensions that arise when implementing both more and less advanced algorithms aimed at supporting decision-making. Thank you to all attendees and co-presenters for the collective push that helps me move this research forward!
My main research interests will remain on:
RQ1: Viewing ADM as a process of reduction, how do people/organisations assign meaning to processed data and algorithmic outcomes?
RQ2: How/when does data transform into (actionable) insights for decision-makers and how does this differ from (expert) knowledge?
