This seminar is hosted by the The Centre for Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths, University of London

Speaker: Dr Javier Lezaun, Deputy Director, Insitute for Science, Innovation and Society

Venue: 137, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW

This seminar seeks to engage creatively with recent debates about the role of social science in society, and from different vantage points explores the idea of innovation in social research. The seminar finds its starting point in the suggestion that social research capacities are today being re-distributed among a variety of agents, as powerful actors, technologies and platforms are today invested in re-tooling social practices and their analysis. Of course, social research has long been a notoriously applicable and famously flexible label, with research formats from survey research to ethnographic studies, opinion polls and reality tv arguably qualifying. However, because of a confluence of recent developments social research seems to be turning into a favoured object of innovation: from the digitization of social life to the rise of open knowledge movements and the increased emphasis on impact and ‘engaged social science’. These developments have occasioned various grand statements as to the renewal of sociology: from the idea of a new computational social science powered by ‘big data’ to the promise of a new age of participatory social research.