1. médialab Sciences Po
  2. News
  3. Mentoring, infrastructure, and commons for research engineers: insights from an anthropologist and tool creator

Mentoring, infrastructure, and commons for research engineers: insights from an anthropologist and tool creator

The 44th session of the MetSem seminar will take place on Thursday, May 16, 2024, from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. We will welcome Mathieu Jacomy (Techno-Anthropology Lab, Copenhagen) for a presentation entitled “Mentoring, infrastructure, and commons for research engineers: a view from an anthropologist and tool creator”.

Event, MetSem seminar

Salle C002, 1 place St-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris

Presentation of the session and speaker biography

Mathieu Jacomy is an engineer and lecturer at the Techno-Anthropology Lab in Copenhagen. He worked for several years at Sciences Po's medialab, where he helped create tools such as Hyphe (web mining) and Gephi (network analysis). Drawing on his anthropological perspective on his own community of practice, Mathieu will first provide an overview of the situation of creators and maintainers of open science digital tools (free and open source), and then engage in a discussion with participants.

Who are we? In the broadest sense, a research engineer can be a researcher or someone outside academia. They may see themselves as public servants or as entrepreneurs. Their profiles are diverse, yet they are often isolated, and their practices are at odds with those around them.

What are our problems? The list is long and perhaps consensual: how to promote maintenance in academia; defend technical-scientific hybridity; acknowledge that tools carry theory; respond to user requests; circumvent/convince the guardians of traditional science; etc.

How can we respond to these issues? Starting from the idea that mentorship is possible for research engineers, let's imagine together the shared infrastructure that we could use, in France and Europe, to support our practices and our contribution to open science.

Iframe https://player.vimeo.com/video/1105721859?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479