Assistant Professor, Jagiellonian University. Science and Technology Studies, energy sociology, sociotechnical imaginaries. https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/ Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:11:18 +0000 🌊 Very grateful for the invitation to participate in the 11th Across Borders Conference, “A Sea of Words: Exploring Blue Humanities,” hosted by the Universidad de Cádiz, part of the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU) alliance! It was a pleasure to present “Are we ready to live on the sea?”, co-authored with Aleksandra Wagner and Oliwia Mandrela and the FAMOS Project, and to think together with humanities scholars about our role in co-designing innovations from the earliest stages of their development. Whose visions guide innovation? Whose knowledge counts? And what relationships with seas and oceans are we building? Blue... Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/15/across-borders-cadiz-blue-humanities.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/15/across-borders-cadiz-blue-humanities.html I am delighted to share that I have been appointed to the Board of Research Committee RC24 “Environment and Society” of the International Sociological Association (ISA), for the remainder of the current term. RC24 fosters international collaboration in environmental sociology, supporting research, teaching, and debate on the relationships between society and the environment. The Committee also promotes dialogue across disciplines, generations, and regions of the world. I look forward to contributing to this global community and to the Committee’s work on the sociology of the environment in the years ahead. More about the Committee: RC24 Environment and Society #Sociology #EnvironmentalSociology... Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/09/rc24-isa-board-appointment.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/09/rc24-isa-board-appointment.html This week, the Capturing Invisible LAB at the Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Sociology co-organised two connected events around the EASST 2026 conference in Kraków, together with colleagues from ETH Zürich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). On Monday we hosted a pre-conference workshop, and on Tuesday we ran a full panel session at EASST itself. Together, they were an attempt to ask what it means to do Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Central and Eastern Europe, rather than about it. Monday, 7 September: STS in Central and Eastern Europe: Projects, Problems and Possibilities The pre-conference workshop, held at... Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/09/democracy-on-the-edge-sts-cee-krakow.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/09/09/democracy-on-the-edge-sts-cee-krakow.html The 17th European Sociological Association Conference in #Warsaw has come to an end! I am leaving with a head full of inspiration and ideas for future research, but also with the joy of reconnecting with friends from across Europe. What our team presented 🌊 We presented the first results of our modelling of the Baltic Sea’s energy futures in the paper “Imagining the Baltic: Constructing Poland’s Energy Future at Sea.” 🌊 Emilia Srebrna presented her excellent Master’s thesis on how the energy transition is imagined, negotiated and experienced by the local community in Choczewo. 🌊 Together with Oliwia Mandrela, we... Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/08/28/esa-2026-warsaw-baltic-sea-sociology.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/08/28/esa-2026-warsaw-baltic-sea-sociology.html What happens when the future arrives in one small municipality all at once? Huge congratulations to my MA student, Emilia Srebrna, on a brilliant thesis defence and an excellent piece of research! 🎓👏 Her thesis, Future in the Making. Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Energy Transition in Choczewo Municipality (Przyszłość w budowie. Socjotechniczne imaginaria transformacji energetycznej w Gminie Choczewo), grew out of fieldwork in and around Choczewo, on the Polish Baltic coast — a place that is becoming an extraordinary laboratory of technological and social transformation. A nuclear power plant, offshore wind farms, AI data centres, and entirely new infrastructures are being... Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/07/11/emilia-srebrna-ma-defence-choczewo.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/07/11/emilia-srebrna-ma-defence-choczewo.html I am truly grateful to the FUTURESPACE team for such a warm welcome at the University of Vienna and for so many inspiring conversations. It was a real pleasure to spend time with the team of FUTURESPACE, an ERC Starting Grant project hosted at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna, led by Dr. Nina Klimburg-Witjes. The project explores how European integration shapes Europe’s future in outer space — and how space futures, infrastructures, and imaginaries feed back into political and institutional orders. During the visit, we had many fruitful discussions about sociotechnical imaginaries, infrastructures,... Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/24/futurespace-visit-university-of-vienna.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/24/futurespace-visit-university-of-vienna.html After my PhD, I found myself looking for a new research path. This is a tough and often stressful moment: trying to find a direction that stays close to your own interests, while also bringing possible benefits to wider society. This week, I had the opportunity to present my idea for a long-term project on Assemblages of the Future and Sea Societies. I am very grateful to the Science Democracy Network for listening to my ideas for future work and for bringing so many thoughtful comments, questions, and perspectives to consider. Many thanks to everyone — and especially to Sheila... Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/13/assemblages-of-the-future-science-democracy-network.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/13/assemblages-of-the-future-science-democracy-network.html In 2022, Tadeusz Rudek and Katarzyna Rabiej-Sienicka launched the Capturing Invisible Lab Seminar Series as a space for intellectual exchange, critical reflection, and conversations with scholars working at the intersection of sociology and Science, Technology and Society studies. Four years later, we are delighted to celebrate the 4th anniversary of our meetings. Over the past years, the seminars have become a meeting place for researchers interested in the visible and invisible forces shaping contemporary sociotechnical worlds: infrastructures, imaginaries, conflicts, futures, risks, institutions, markets, and forms of knowledge that often remain hidden, even though they operate right before our eyes. In... Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/10/capturing-invisible-lab-4th-anniversary.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/10/capturing-invisible-lab-4th-anniversary.html For me, commitment to sociological inquiry and STS is not only about the constant critique of inherited realities. Today, perhaps more than ever, it means actively participating in debates about the natural and social worlds around us: researching them, understanding them, and opening up new possible pathways. This is what we do in the FAMOS EU Project. We ask: what are the relations between humans and the sea? Under what conditions would societies desire to live on the sea and with the sea? And how can these assumptions be meaningfully embedded into technological and engineering design? FAMOS is developing floating... Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/02/famos-floating-islands-grounded-sociology.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/06/02/famos-floating-islands-grounded-sociology.html We warmly invite you to the next meeting of the Capturing Invisible Seminars series, taking place on Thursday, 7 May 2026, 18:00–19:30 CEST. This time we are delighted to host Kebene Wodajo (University of Oxford / University of St. Gallen), who will present her research at the intersection of law, technology, and business and human rights. Of Datalegality and Invisibilised Worlds About the Speaker Dr Kebene Wodajo is a law and technology scholar working at the intersection of law, technology, and business and human rights, with a particular focus on legal, moral, and political responsibility for data-mediated structural and intersectional... Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/seminar/2026/05/05/of-datalegality-and-invisibilised-worlds.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/seminar/2026/05/05/of-datalegality-and-invisibilised-worlds.html Speaker: Anna Szołucha (Jagiellonian University) Date: Thursday, 23 April 2026, 18:00–19:30 CEST / 17:00–18:30 BST Format: Online (MS Teams) What happens when a single corporate vision designs every aspect of a community’s reality? This talk explores Starbase, Texas — the facility where SpaceX builds and launches the Starship rocket — through the lens of historic American company towns. Drawing on the experiences of its inhabitants, Anna Szołucha investigates how Starbase blurs the boundary between a functional workplace and a total human environment, using the “simulation hypothesis” as a metaphor for a new technological extreme. About the speaker Anna Szołucha is... Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/04/22/life-in-the-spacex-simulation-exploring-the-contemporary-company-town-at-starbase.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/2026/04/22/life-in-the-spacex-simulation-exploring-the-contemporary-company-town-at-starbase.html This week we completed two important milestones in the PANTHEON project: Scoping Workshops organised in China and the European Union. These meetings proved to be more than just spaces for gathering perspectives — they became a unique arena where Chinese and European visions of a post-transition world could confront, complement, and challenge one another. The result? A set of findings as diverse as they are inspiring — and at times, surprisingly convergent. And this is only the beginning. What happened during the workshops? During several intensive sessions, we worked on: long-term visions of post-transition realities, concrete actions that must take... Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/pantheon/2026/04/01/pantheon-scoping-workshops.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/pantheon/2026/04/01/pantheon-scoping-workshops.html We warmly invite you to the next meeting of the Capturing Invisible Seminars series, taking place on Thursday, 26 March 2026, 18:00–19:30 CET. This time we are delighted to host Nina Klimburg-Witjes (University of Vienna), who will present research conducted within her ERC Starting Grant project — a fascinating and ambitious project on the relationships between outer space, Europe, technology, and visions of the future. Towards a Topography of Earth–Space Relations: European Dis/Integration and Future Visions in the New Space Age How does European cooperation in space shape visions of the future — and how do those visions, in turn,... Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/seminar/2026/03/26/capturing-invisible-seminar-klimburg-witjes.html https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/seminar/2026/03/26/capturing-invisible-seminar-klimburg-witjes.html Appointed to the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster Thu, 06 Feb 1986 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html National Medal of Science awarded by President Carter Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to quantum electrodynamics Thu, 21 Oct 1965 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html The Feynman Lectures on Physics begins publication Fri, 01 Sep 1961 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html Delivered 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' talk at Caltech APS meeting Mon, 01 Jun 1959 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html Joined the faculty at California Institute of Technology Mon, 01 Jan 1951 00:00:00 +0000 https://tadeuszrudek.github.io/allnews.html