Noortje Marres (Professor)

Academic profile

I am a professor in Science, Technology and Society. I was trained in thesocial study of controversies about science, innovation and nature (climate change, renewable energy, AI). I have also contributed to interdisciplinary methods development (issue mapping, situational analytics). My current work is concerned with experimentation beyond the laboratory as a critical site of knowledge production and transformative intervention in living environments. I am a co-lead of the Society and Culture Spotlight at the University of Warwick. I am also an external faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and a Visiting Professor in the Centre for Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen (Germany).

I conducted my doctoral research in the Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam and the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines (Paris). Before joining the University of Warwick in 2015, I held posts at Goldsmiths, University of London (2011-2015; 2007-2009), the University of Oxford (2009-2011), and the University of Amsterdam (2005-2007). At Goldsmiths, I directed the Centre for Invention and Social Process (CISP) and convened the MA/MSc Digital Sociology. At Warwick, I was Research Director and then Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (2015-2019; 2019 to 2021). I have been a Visiting Fellow at the Berlin Social Science Centre (2014), Mercator Fellow at the University of Siegen (2017-18), and a Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (2021-2022) and the Universities of Leiden (2018-2021), Vienna (2019) and St Gallen (2020). I served as an elected member of Council of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) from 2018 to 2021 and was a member of the subpanel for Sociology for REF2021. I hold a MSc and a MA in Sociology and Philosophy of Science and Technology from the University of Amsterdam (both cum laude).

Research

Subject area

Noortje's work investigates issues at the intersection of technology, environment, publics, and everyday life. She has led research projects focused on controversies about science, innovation and nature (climate change, renewable energy, AI), and conducted field research on new forms of participation in work on sustainable living ("material publics"), and more recently, in automated and connected urban settings. Noortje has also contributed to methods development across social research, digital media and activism, notably issue mapping and situational analytics. Her current research focuses on experimentation "beyond the laboratory," examining diverse forms of testing in everyday environments - street trials of intelligent vehicles, Covid testing situations and environmental sensing systems - as public interfaces between science, engineering, nature, politics, and society. Much of her work, then, is concerned with experiments in living environments as forms of knowledge, intervention and engagement that are gaining critical importance in technology-intensive, ecologically challenged societies.

Areas of interest: Science & Technology Studies; Digital Sociology; Sociology of Testing; Pragmatism; Issue Mapping and Controversy Analysis; Experiments in Participation; Environmental Publics; the Postnormal

Further information is available on Noortje's personal siteLink opens in a new window.

Selected Publications

Books

Inventing the Social (N. Marres, M. Guggenheim and A. Wilkie (eds.)) (Mattering Press, 2018)
Digital Sociology: the Reinvention of Social ResearchLink opens in a new window (Polity, 2017)
Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday PublicsLink opens in a new window (Palgrave, 2012)

Journals and book chapters

Marres, N. (2026) The postnormal society: On trials of co-existence in everyday environments, PREPRINT
Marres, N., Winthereik, B. R., Fuster, G. G., Schneider, T., & Dickel, S. (2025). Infrastructural Participation in Digital Societies: Challenges and Alternatives. Science & Technology Studies.
Marres, N. (2025). How tech trials put society to the test. Theory, Culture & Society, 02632764251342911.
Gobbo, B., Marres, N., Poletti, C., & Terenghi, G. (2025) The shape-shifter: a social design method for eliciting AI & Society controversies, SocArxiv [PREPRINT]
Marres, N. (2025) Is the socio-technical becoming undone? A note on Ruckenstein's modes of engagement with digital futures, Dialogues on Digital Society, 29768640251323397
Marres, N. and M.Valderrama Barragán (2025). Making expert advice public in a time of emergency: Independent SAGE and the contestation of science during the Covid pandemic in the UK. Social Studies of Science: 03063127241309071.
Marres, N., Castelle, M., Gobbo, B., Poletti, C., & Tripp, J. (2024). AI as super-controversy: Eliciting AI and society controversies with an extended expert community in the UK. Big Data & Society,11(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241255103
Marres, N. (2024). Do automated vehicle trials test society? Testing mobility futures in the West Midlands.Mobilities, 1-21. 10.1080/17450101.2024.2356566
Marres, N. (2024). Articulation, or the persistent problem with explanation. The British Journal of Sociology,10.1111/1468-4446.13084
Marres, N., Colombo, G., Bounegru, L., Gray, J. W., Gerlitz, C., & Tripp, J. (2023). Testing and Not Testing for Coronavirus on Twitter: Surfacing Testing Situations Across Scales With Interpretative Methods.Social Media+ Society,9(3), 20563051231196538.
Marres, N., & Sormani, P. (2023).Testing "AI": Do We Have a Situation? A Conversation. Media of Co-operation Working Paper Series, University of Siegen.
Marres, N. (2023). How to turn politics around: things, the earth, ecology. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 01622439231190884.
Marres, N. (2023). Comment renverser la politique : sur les choses, la terre, l’écologieLink opens in a new window, Symposium sous la direction d'Antoine Hennion, Revue Pragmata, p. 480-508
Marres, N. (2023). Seven moments with Bruno Latour.Social Studies of Science, Vol 53, Issue 2.
Gray, J. and N. Marres (2022) Articulating urban collectives with data. In: Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City, MacKinnon, V. Fast and R. Burns, R (eds), Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Marres, N. (2021) How to think sociologically about the digital society? In:Introduction to Sociology, K. Murji, S. Neal, J. Solomos (eds), London and Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 18-36
Marres, N.(2021) No issues without media : the changing politics of public controversy in digital societies. In: Swartz, Jeremy & Wasko, Janet, (eds.) Media : A Transdisciplinary Inquiry. Bristol, UK ; Chicago, USA: Intellect Books
Marres, N. (2020) For a situational analytics: an interpretative methodology for the study of situations in computational settings, Big Data & Society,https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720949571
Marres, N. & de Rijcke, S. (2020).From indicators to indicating interdisciplinarity: A participatory mapping methodology for research communities in-the-making.Link opens in a new window Quantitative Science Studies3 (1): 1041-1055
Marres, N. (2020)Review of Communities at a Crossroads: Online Sociability in the Fade of Cyberculture, by A Pelizza,Information, Communications and Society, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1781918
Costas, R., de Rijcke, S., & Marres, N. (2020).Heterogeneous couplings: Operationalizing network perspectives to study science‐society interactions through social media metrics.Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
Marres, N., & Stark, D. (2020).Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing.The British Journal of Sociology,71(3), 423-443.
Marres, N. (2020).Co‐existence or displacement: Do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?The British Journal of Sociology,71(3), 537-555.
Cohen, T., Stilgoe, J., Stares, S., Akyelken, N., Cavoli, C., Day, J., Dickinson, J., Fors, V., Hopkins, D., Lyons, G. and Marres, N., Sipe, N., Tennant, C., Waded, Z., Wigley, E. (2020).A constructive role for social science in the development of automated vehicles.Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives,6, p.100133.
Marres, N. (2020)"What if nothing happens? Street trials of driverless cars as experiments in participation,"Link opens in a new window In: TechnoScience in Society, Sociology of Knowledge Yearbook. S. Maassen, and Dickel, S. and Schneider, C. H. (eds.), Nijmegen: Springer/Kluwer.
Marres, N. (2020) As ANT is getting undone, can Pragmatism help us re-do it?The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory. Anders Blok, Ignacio Farias and Celia Roberts (Eds), London and New York: Routledge.
Marres, N. (2018).Why We Can't Have Our Facts Back. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society,4, 423-443
Marres, N., J. Lezaun and M. Tironi (2016),"Experiments in Participation"Link opens in a new window, The Science and Technology Studies Handbook, Volume 4, edited by C. Miller, E. Smitt-Doer, U. Felt and R. Fouche (eds.), Cambridge: MIT Press.
Marres, N. (2015) "Why Map Issues? On Controversy Analysis as a Digital Method." Science, Technology & Human Values 40: 655-686, doi:10.1177/0162243915574602, [articleLink opens in a new window]
C. Lury, and N. Marres (2015) Notes on Objectual Valuation, in: Making Things Valuable, edited by M. Kornberger, L. Justessen, A. Koed Madsen and J. Mouritsen, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Marres, N. and C. Gerlitz (2015)"Interface Methods: Renegotiating relations between digital social research, STS and sociology."Link opens in a new window Sociological Review, 14 August, doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12314
Marres, N., & Weltevrede, E. (2013). Scraping the Social? Issues in live social research. Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3), 313-335
Marres, N., & Lezaun, J. (2011). Materials and devices of the public: an introduction. Economy and society, 40(4), 489-509
Marres, N. (2007). The issues deserve more credit pragmatist contributions to the study of public involvement in controversy. Social Studies of Science, 37(5), 759-780
Marres, N. (2005) No issue, no public: Democratic deficits after the displacement of politics, Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam

Lectures and media

(2026) The Struggle for Interdependence, Design Interrupted, Aalto University, Helsinki.
(2026) Ideology and Utopia Revisited. Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture, University of Liverpool.
(2025) Postnormal: on the impossibility of co-existence with technology in everyday environment, Cohabiltability Conference. Czech Academy of Science.
(2025) Expert comment on The Artificial Human, BBC Radio 4, 2 July
(2025) 'Are we desiging AI to work with us or to replace us?' The Monocle Daily, 22 April
(2024) Five ways you might already encounter AI in cities (and not realise it), The Conversation, 26 November.
(2024) The Non-human Standpoint: Living Environments After AI, Lecture at ICI Berlin, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, 25 October [video].
(2024) After the Automation of Methods: the Case for Situational Analytics. Annual Lecture of the National Centre for Research Methods, with Carrie Friese (LSE) and Rachel Coldicutt (Careful Industries) as respondents, Royal Society, London, 21 May.
(2024) Not my Existential Risk! The politics of controversy in an age of AI, public panel with Matthias Spielkamp (AlgorithmWatch), Brenda McPhail (Canadian Civil Liberties Association), Mark Scott (Politico), & Gloria González Fuster (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Museum of Kommunication, Berlin, 30 January.
(2023) Expert comment, Bletchley made me more optmistic, The Guardian, 3 November
(2022) Why we still can't have our facts back, online lecture, Scientific assessment in a post-truth society, Symposium hosted by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving), 6- 7 October [video]
(2022) "Social Science is Explanation or it is Nothing,"Online debate with M. Savage, M. Mills and J. Go, chaired by M. Krause, London School of Economics, 13 October [video]
(2021) Dreams, delusions and data, debate with K. Cukier and J. Bryson, chaired by L. Mason, HowTheLightGetsIn, Festival for Music and Philosophy, 11 June [video]
(2018) Situational Analytics, Oxford Internet Institute, October 18 [video]
(2018) Is Big Data a Big Mistake?, HowTheLightGetsIn, Festival for Music and Philosophy, 26 May [video]
(2017) About Fake News, Social Sharing, and their Blind Spots, Annual Public Lecture, Studium Generale, University of Maastricht, 30 October
(2016) Infrastructuring Publics or Societies? On street trials as experiments in interpretation, University of Siegen, 12 December [video]
(2015) What makes a public affair? Haus der Kunst, Munich, April 16, [videoLink opens in a new window]
(2014) Marres, N. interview with M. Carrigan on Digital Sociology, LSE Impact Blog, December 3, [interviewLink opens in a new window]

Projects

Public Values in AI research (Project Co-lead), creating evidence connecting AI with public values, funded by UKRI's meta-science Programme.
The Media of Co-operation (PI), Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 1187) at the University of Siegen, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
AI in the street (Project Lead), scoping study funded by the AHRC Bridging Divides in Responsible AI (BRAID) Programme.
Curating data cultures (PI), collaborative project funded by the University of Warwick's Enhancing Research Culture Fund.
A possible model for real-time public science? A social study of Independent Sage (PI), Research England Participatory Research Fund.
Beyond the lab: an empirical philosophy of intelligent vehicle testing, Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
Shaping 21st Century AI: Controversy and Closure (PI), with Dr. Michael Castelle and Dr. James Tripp, funded by the ESRC (ORA Programme).
Creating the Possible (PI), with Prof. Sarah Pink et al (Emerging Technologies Lab, Monash University), Monash-Warwick Alliance Catalyst Project.
Sampling sounds of the future: What does the future of Coventry sound like? (PI), A participatory project supported by the Warwick Engagement Institute for Coventry City of Culture.
Inventing Indicators of Interdisciplinarity (PI), collaboration with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), University of Leiden.
Scoping issues in autonomous vehicle research at the science/society interface (PI), Research development Project, University of Warwick, 2016-2017.
Issue Mapping Online (PI), funded by the ESRC Digital Social Research Programme.

Teaching

Modules

At CIM, I teach the following modules

Office hours by appointment.

Supervision

The following doctoral research students have been supervised by me at the University of Warwick:

Loup Cellard (completed, co-supervised with N. Tkacz)
Helena Suarez Val (completed, co-supervised with M. Puig de la Bellacasa)
Oihane Etayo (completed, co-supervised with S. Richardson)
Matias Valderrama Barragan (completed, co-supervised with C. Lury)
Cynthia Ng (completed, co-supervised with M. Spencer)
James McNally (co-supervised with M. Spencer)
Martina Mallett (co-supervised with C. Lury)
Greta Timaite (co-supervised with M. Castelle)
Tibebu Taye Gulilat (co-supervised with S. Sharma)
Luke Robert Mason (co-supervised with S. Fuller)
Auriane van der Vaeren (co-supervised with M. Davis)

Contact details

Email:

N.Marres@warwick.ac.uk

Phone:

+44 (0)2476 573628

Mailing address:

Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies

Room B0.12

University of Warwick

Coventry

CV4 7AL