I am pleased to say that I have got a position as a postdoctoral researcher in Media Lab Helsinki at Aalto University where now I am conducting my six-month research under the supervision of Prof. Lily Diaz-Kommonen. My project, titled “Laboratory Beyond Science: Towards an Analysis of New Physical Place and a New Paradigm”, is devoted to the meaning, the operation and the idea of laboratory in media, culture and the humanities.

In the face of proclaimed crisis, the humanities has undergone many significant infrastructural changes. One of their implementations is building a new physical location that is ‘laboratory’ which radically modifies the nature of humanities. Since every workplace determines a type of research, instruments, and networking between actors, we need to focus on an investigation of the new physical place to realize how it transforms the way of conducting research, methodology, and knowledge production in the humanities where consequently, for me, a ‘cultural artifact’ is seen as a ‘sample’.

Therefore, my research is devoted to the analysis of laboratory beyond science: in media, culture and the humanities through the lens of the sociology of space and sociology of scientific knowledge. The goal of the project is to show that the ‘laboratory is considered as an 1) institutional change within the university, 2) a space of technological imagination and designing new society and culture, and 3) a new paradigm implying new practices, including new ways of knowing, new forms of sociality, and new forms of agency.

A primary research method is as a case study to investigate the laboratories in practice, seen as a physical space (Media Lab Helsinki at Aalto University), and a paradigm (Aalto LAB Mexico). In the coming months, I will also conduct interviews with heads of laboratories.