Paola Castaño
Website under construction
I am a sociologist of knowledge and science, and my work engages with epistemology of the social sciences, institutional theory, valuation studies, and history and philosophy of science. I am a qualitative researcher and my empirical domain of research is science in the context of human spaceflight.
I recently completed a research fellow position at the University of Exeter in the project “Philosophy of Open Science for Diverse Research Environments” where I led a study about the social organization and epistemic implications of data sharing in space biology, in collaboration with NASA’s Open Science Data Repository. Results from this project have been published in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Social Epistemology, and the Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space.
I am completing a book about scientific research on the International Space Station, examining NASA experiments in plant biology, biomedicine, and particle astrophysics alongside institutional assessments of the station’s value. The book is titled Beyond the Lab: The Social Lives of Experiments on the International Space Station, and develops a sociological approach to experimentation as a social process and to the institutional embeddedness of contemporary science. Aspects of this research have been published in The American Sociologist and Acta Astronautica.
In 2021 I worked (remotely from the UK) as a research associate with Western Sydney University in the project Australia a Space-faring Nation: Imaginaries and Practices of Space Futures, funded by the Australian Research Council.
I have a PhD and MA in sociology from the University of Chicago, and undergraduate degrees in History and Political Science from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá. My research has been funded and supported by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, the Free University of Berlin, Waseda University in Tokyo, and the British Academy.
Contact: p.a.castano-rodriguez@exeter.ac.uk
Paola Castaño 