Dr.in Ruth Müller

Ruth Müller was born in 1981 in Rum/Innsbruck. Curious about how life works, she studied molecular biology at the University of Vienna. During her studies and her work in breast cancer research, she became more and more aware of how in our age of innovation, research and high technology, science influences nearly every aspect of (post)modern life. She hence minored in science & technology studies, with a focus on feminist epistemology of science. In her interdisciplinary master thesis in the EU-project ‘Challenges of Biomedicine’ (Department of Social Studies of Science; supervisor: Univ. Prof Ulrike Felt), she explored how the experience of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer reconfigures individual and collective identities (e.g. concepts of ‘the family’). Her interview-based work showed how beyond personal situatedness, national contexts (e.g. insurance systems, techno-political discourse, etc.) matter deeply for how a technology like testing is applied, understood and made use of.

After MA graduation in 2007, she pursued a doctoral degree in sociology at the Department of Social Studies of Science. Her PhD thesis was part of the Gen-Au research project ‘Living Changes in the Life Science’ and explored how changes in the career rationales in the academic life sciences affect the socio-epistemic interactions of researchers within lab groups (supervisor: Univ. Prof. Ulrike Felt). Her qualitative study focused on postdocs, a group of researchers under especially high career pressures.