Vici grant for Karin Bijsterveld

3 February 2010

Karin Bijsterveld has been awarded an NWO Vici grant. She receives this five-year grant to extend and further strengthen her research line "Sonic Skills: Sound and Listening in the Development of Science, Technology and Medicine (1920-now)".

The project aims to understand the contested position of sonic skills in knowledge production by studying the role of sound and listening in science, technology and medicine. It focuses on the 1920s onwards, thus taking the rise of recording technologies into account.

The programme has three questions. The first is how scientists, engineers and physicians have employed their ears in making sense of what they studied. The second question is how such listening practices have generated new scientific knowledge and technological design. The final and most crucial question is why in scientific legitimization, listening has remained contested nonetheless. The programme’s selection of cases covers different phases in research and design, ranging from tinkering with technology on shop floors and trial-and-error in laboratories, to recording natural phenomena and "sonification’’: the auditory display of scientific data.

The Vici grants are the most substantial grants in the NWO Innovational Research Incentives Scheme.

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