Dr Karolina Kazimierczak

Research Overview

My research draws on feminist sciences studies, new materialism, posthumanism and poststructuralism and is concerned with the questions of knowledge, power and agency across different domains: in science and academic institutions; in health, illness and biomedicine; and in popular culture.

My doctoral research had looked at the interactions between lay and expert knowledge and between academic (scientific) and popular discourse in the fan-scholarly practices of science fiction fandom communities.

My more recent work has focused on biomedical practices in cancer care, looking at the specific diagnostic, prognostic and treatment apparatuses and developing a performative understanding of clinical work, and a relational, posthumanist conception of knowledge politics.

My other recent research have included: an ethnographic investigation of the everyday sociotechnical practices at work and in the home (with Natasha Mauthner); a visual methods project exloring spatio-temporal configurations of urban green spaces (with Natasha Mauthner and Tiina Suopajärvi); and an investigation of collaborative approaches to health monitoring (with Lucia D'Ambruoso and Chloë Brooks).

Current Research

Biomedical apparatuses of cancer research and care

This ongoing research engages with current sociological and anthropological discussions of cancer research and care and brings them into dialogue with feminist, new materalist, and poststructrualist accounts of biomedicine and its apparatuses. It examines different technologies and practices involved in the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancer, and explores the ways in which these help produce or materialise particular objects/bodies/bodily conditions and their specific attributes/identities. These explorations form the basis for the discussions of the different understandings of responsibility and accountability in biomedical knowledge-making.

My publications in this area include:

Kazimierczak, KA. (2018) Medical imaging and 'the borderline gaze of touch and hearing': The politics of knowledge beyond 'sense atomism'. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.

Kazimierczak, KA. (2018) Clinical encounter and the logic of relationality: Reconfiguring bodies and subjectivities in clinical relations. Health, 22:2, 185-201.

Kazimierczak, KA and Skea, ZC. (2015) 'I've used the word cancer but it's actually good news': Discursive performativity of cancer and the identity of urological cancer services. Sociology of Health and Illness, 37:3, 340-354.

Digital Epiphanies

This is a a multi-disciplinary project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under 'Digital Economy' stream. A collaboration between sociologists, psychologists, computer scientists and mathematicians, the project explores mutual connections of digital technologies and everyday sociotechnical practicecs at work and in the home. Looking at organisational policies and practices, individual work habits, as well as family technological practices, it examins the ways in which digital divices and applications are involved in the configuring and reconfiguring of work, family and the boundaries between them.

My publications in this area include:

Mauthner, NS and Kazimierczak, KA. (2018) Theoretical perspectives on technology and society: Implications for understanding the relationship between ICTs and family life. In: B. Neves and C. Casimiro (eds.) Connecting Families? Information and Communication Technologies in a Life Course Perspective. Policy Press.

Rhythms of everyday life: temporal and spatial performativities of public spaces

This visual methods project explores the rhythms of everyday life in an urban space in the city of Aberdeen, and how these practices both unfold through, and constitute, specific times and spaces. It is a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Aberdeen Business School, the Department of Film and Visual Culture, and the University of Oulu's Urban Life Lab. It is funded by grants from the Caledonian Research Foundation/Royal Society of Edinburgh, the University of Oulu, and the University of Aberdeen Principal's Interdisciplinary Fund.

The Bowl: A Day in the Life of Union Terrace Gardens: http://thebowl2014.wordpress.com/