We are a transnational collective of researchers and practitioners who are concerned, yet interested by the phenomenon of hype across science and technology. Initially gathered at the first hype studies panel at European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference, we decided to share our questions and mobilise a community of people with similar interests. Over 2025, we will be working hard on organising a conference, a repository of resources and a regular newsletter. We are committed to horizontal and transparent decision making practices and always welcome potential new co-conspirators - get in touch if you'd like to get involved!
Click here to find out more about our governance practices.
Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves is a sociologist of design, technology, and imagination. His research practices engage empirical, speculative, design-led and artistic methods to explore how material futures emerge through the interplay of technology, industry, policy and finance, particularly in relation to uncertainty, hype and fiction. He is a lecturer in Science and Technology Studies, as well as critical and speculative design, across several BA and MA at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), ELISAVA and ESCAC among others. He is co-founder of the design futures studio Becoming and member of the ecosocial transition design cooperative Holon. He is currently a PhD candidate at the research group Tecnopolítica/CNSC at UOC, where he develops the notion of sociotechnical fiction and explores its agencies in relation to cyberlibertarianism. His artistic research is presented at engineering-fiction.org.
Wenzel Mehnert is a futurologist focusing on the imaginaries of new and emerging technologies. He researches, writes and teaches experimental methods of futurology. In his work, Wenzel Mehnert focuses on the intersection between speculative fictions and the evaluation of new and emerging sciences and technologies (e.g. A.I., SynBio, Internet of Things, etc.). He worked as a researcher at the Berlin University of the Arts, co-founded the Berlin Ethics Lab at the Technical University of Berlin and currently lives in Vienna, where he works at the Austrian Institute of Technology and the ethics of new and emerging technologies.
Vassilis Galanos is a Teaching Fellow in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies convening the course Internet, Society and Economy, and co-convening Understanding Technology and Data, Design, and the City. They are also a Research Fellow in Sociology, member of the Data Civics project, facilitating discussion between community-led regeneration and data-driven innovation, and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Engineering, member of The New Real Observatory, responsible for the evaluation of artworks which interrogate the human-algorithm interface. In their doctoral project, he investigated the social dimensions of AI and robotics. More specifically, Vassilis explores issues of expertise (who is entitled to speak about AI and robotics?) and expectations (how do future visions and imaginaries shape current discourses on AI/robotics in research, policy, and their public understanding?).
Dani Shanley is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Dani's expertise is mainly within science and technology studies (STS) and the philosophy of technology, with a particular focus on reflexive, participatory design methodologies (or, responsible innovation), such as social labs and value sensitive design (VSD). Dani currently works on AI and robotics, thinking with and through the lenses of responsibility, hype, and bullshit.
Ola Michalec is a Lecturer in Digital Futures at the Bristol University Business School and Bristol Digital Futures Institute. Ola’s research interests revolve around understanding how experts from diverse fields resolve tensions between maintaining and innovating critical infrastructures, with a particular focus on energy systems. Her current project explores the ebbs and flows of hype in the context of developing digital twins in the UK. Ola plays an active role in several communities such as the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security or the Advisory Board for the Alan Turing Institute Digital Twin Network+.
Jascha Bareis is a Political scientist, STS and Media scholar. His passion lies at the crossroads of questions of normativity, political communication and future studies. Currently, he analyzes and comments on the politics of AI, tech oligarchy, and the field of autonomous weapons. Other fields of expertise include technology assessment, trust and technology and democratic theory. He is scientific staff at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Anlaysis (ITAS), research group Digital Technologies and Societal Change and associate researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), research program The Evolving of Digital Society. He is just about to start his post-doc at the university of Fribourg, joining the HUMAN-IST institute to research the performativity of AI.
Pierre Depaz is a researcher and programmer with backgrounds in political science, game design and comparative literature. His work gravitates around software—how it represents the world and how it redistributes agency to its environment, with a specific focus on source code, programming languages and protocols as mediating forces in human discursive interactions. He is a researcher in media philosophy at the HfG Karlsruhe after defending a PhD thesis at Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle on the aesthetics of source code. He also wrote the website where you're reading this!
Isa Luiten is a research assistant at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). She is currently pursuing a master's in Science and Technology Studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, building on her background in Cultural Anthropology. Her research explores the intersection of infrastructure studies and policy, with a focus on how governmental organizations structure emerging technologies. In her thesis, she examines policy as infrastructure in the European space sector, analyzing the ways in which conferences, funding schemes, and institutional networks shape the development of the 'hyped up' NewSpace imaginary.
