Feminist Technoscience in Practice: HAUNTED ARCHIVES – Working and thinking with ghosts

Date: October 6th 2025, 15:00-18:00 (CET)
Location: IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S

### IMPORTANT
The lecture at 15.00 at AUD3 is open to all. To participate in the workshop (from 16.00 at 4A54), you need to reserve a ticket.

15:00 - 16:00 (CET) Open Guest Lecture with Valeria Borsotti - Haunted Archives: Working and thinking with ghosts [Room: Aud 3]

This presentation brings ‘hauntology’ and crip theory together to explore how sedimented histories and normative assumptions live on as ghosts and lingering absences in academic institutions. I will discuss two cases from my empirical research. The first explores how gaps and erasures emerge in datasets and educational practices within the context of accessibility and DEI at the University of Copenhagen. The second examines data work with historical human remains stored in a university museum, showing how this work is relational, political and haunted, as it demands active and ongoing engagement with the specters of past historical inheritances – ranging from ableism to scientific racism. Together, these cases invite us to reflect on the generative potential of ghosts as tool for norm-critical research and catalyst for norm-creative, bottom-up interventions – from games to collaborative practices of ethical digitization. We will also consider the affective dimensions of engaging with institutional ghosts, for both researchers and data workers.

16:00 - 18:00 (CET) Workshop with Adam Bencard, Andreas Schmidt Eriksen and Valeria Borsotti [Room: 4A54]

In this hands-on workshop, you will engage with medical and archival objects from the Copenhagen Medical Museum, working with the ghosts and absences in the archive. You will learn the basics of archival research and co-create new collections building upon the objects in the room. First, Andreas will share some practical insights into how one actually does archival research. Using his own work on the history of psychology as an example, he will illustrate how this research was later adapted into norm-critical games by game design students at ITU. Furthermore, he will explore what it means to read archives along and against the grain. Building on this, Adam will introduce a more hands-on exercise aimed at introducing you to working with historical and contemporary objects in curatorially informed ways. The exercise builds on the value of objects as conduits for critical histories as well as curatorial strategies such as ‘happening-upon’ and juxtaposition. The exercise will be contextualized with examples from our long-standing curatorial experiments at Medical Museion at the intersection of science, art and history.

About Feminist Technoscience in Practice

ETHOS Lab invites interested students, researchers, and practitioners to take part in a series of events titled ‘Feminist Technoscience in Practice’. The events focus on the practical application of digital and critical feminist methods.
The events are rooted in technical practices but are tailored to accommodate any level of technical experience. Participation is open and free for anyone interested, but registration is required.

About the guests:

Valeria Borsotti is a sociotechnical researcher and Postdoc at Medical Museion and the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center (UCPH). Her research explores how scientific institutions engage with issues of equity and accessibility, with an emphasis on their sociomaterial practices. Her work has explored the ethics of digitizing human remains; organizational accountability in STEM; accessibility and neuroinclusivity in higher education and issues of access in digital public services.

Andreas Schmidt Eriksen is a historian and PhD fellow at Medical Museion and the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center (UCPH), where he researches the history and philosophy of health complexity. He has studied history at the University of Copenhagen and Ruprecht Karls-Universität Heidelberg.

Adam Bencard is a curator and Associate Professor in medical humanities at Medical Museion, and group leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research. He has curated a number of award-winning exhibitions, including Mind the Gut (2019 UMAC Award) and The World is in You (2023 Engagement Award from the Organization of Danish Museums). His current research focuses on health complexity, as part of the Copenhagen Center for Health Complexity.