Kari Zacharias, Elizabeth Reddy, and Skye Niles

The spaces between the social sciences and engineering are exciting and promising areas in which to work. However, like any powerful liminal space, they also present significant challenges. Ethnographers who work with and among engineers face persistent questions about the intention, power, character, ownership, and motivations of their work. Some of these ethnographers draw on prior engineering training and practice, while others come to this space with external perspectives on engineering. This panel invites social scientists who collaborate with engineers to share their experiences and reflect on the commonalities and defining characteristics of their work. What can ethnographic approaches bring to engineering projects? What matters of concern do engineering and the social sciences share? How do ethnographers navigate the difficult power relations that are often inherent to their roles? How do ethnographers claim expertise in engineering projects without promoting a clear social-technical divide? How are ethnographers’ interventions in engineering environments configured as both research and service? Whose expertise — the engineer’s, the ethnographer’s, or a combination of the two — is being communicated by a project’s output, and whose should be? The panel brings together scholars and educators with training in engineering, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, and engineering education to discuss these questions. Collectively, the panelists have conducted ethnographic research in engineering environments including classrooms, conferences, aerospace companies, risk management offices, humanitarian development projects, and interdisciplinary research institutes. The discussion will include space for exchange with conference attendees from all disciplines, to collectively think through how and why ethnographic methods are used in collaboration with, by, and for engineers.