In-Forest Research Project

Science as a field of struggle: A multi-method study of inequality and its epistemic effects in forest research

Our multi-method study seeks to explore the interplay of valuation and inequalities in science, using the interdisciplinary and planet-critical field of forest research as an empirical case. It examines which/whose knowledge is recognised on what grounds, and how social dimensions like gender and geographical location impact the scholars’ social and epistemic positions. Drawing on sociology of science and scientometrics, valuation studies, and inequality scholarship, the project combines bibliometric and ethnographic methods with comparative content analysis of scientific publications. Our geographical focus is on South Africa and Tanzania, countries for which we compile country-specific databases of forest research, along with a ‘global’ one.

The project is an international collaboration between scholars at the Department of Science, Technology and Society (STS) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany; the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) of Stellenbosch University, South Africa; the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University, The Netherlands; and the Tanzania Forestry Research Institute (TAFORI), Tanzania. It runs from February 2022 until January 2026, and is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - DFG, Project number 452021647).