Fabian Muniesa

Fabian Muniesa is a senior research at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), Ecole des Mines de Paris. His fields of expertise include science and technology studies, economic sociology, economic anthropology and organization studies. His current areas of interest include the sociology of finance, the anthropology of capitalism, the history of experimental methods in the social sciences, the pragmatics of calculation, and the politics of innovation. He is the director of the Observatory of Responsible Innovation and the holder of an ERC Starting Grant. Fabian Muniesa is also the author of The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn (Routledge, 2014).

Biography

I am a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), a research center of Mines ParisTech (formerly Ecole des Mines de Paris, now also part of Paris Sciences et Lettres and a member of i3). My position there now: "maître de recherche", i.e. professor / senior research. I am also an external faculty affiliate at the Center on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University, at the Center for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, and at the International University College of Turin. I am the executive director of the Observatory for Responsible Innovation at Mines ParisTech. I am the holder of an ERC Starting Grant (research project PERFORMABUSINESS) and an editor with Valuation Studies.

My primary research fields are science and technology studies, economic sociology, organization studies and anthropology. I develop interest in topics such as financial capitalism, quantification, performance in management, business education, valuation, innovation policy, architecture and experimental methods, topics which I aproach from an anthropological, qualitative, pragmatist angle. A good summary on my take on these and comparable topics can be obtained from my book The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn (snippets and comments avalaible here).

I was initially trained as a sociologist at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. I followed there an MSc programme in 1997 (at the Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología).In 1999 I joined the social sciences laboratory of France Télécom R&D; in Paris (formerly Centre National d'Etudes des Télécommunications) and enrolled in the PhD program of the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation. I submitted my thesis in 2003, and thenjoined the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics for a post-doctoral research fellowship. Subsequently, I came back to Paris and joined the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation with an international grant from the Ville de Paris. I was recruited as a permanent research staff member in 2005. My current, permanent position is of "maître de recherche" (senior researcher, professorial level) at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. My main teaching activity is at Mines ParisTech.

I teach a course on the sociology of markets (course S9525) for the third year students of the engineering programme at Mines ParisTech. I am involved in other teaching activities there, which include the ISIGE's master programme in environmental engineering and management. Other teaching collaborations include special-purpose seminars such as the Organizing Agents and Institutions PhD Course at the Copenhagen Business School or the MSc in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance at the International University College of Turin. I also act as a co-supervisor for a number of PhD candidates at the CSI, and I co-direct the CSI doctoral research workshop.