What does really happen between the moment when a scientist is observing a bird in the wild and publishing a scientific chart? Jana Thierfelder reveals the hidden life of field science through the 30-year archive of biologist Michael Griesser’s work with Siberian jays in Sweden. Blending design, anthropology, and science studies, it uncovers the sketches, notes, tools, and sensory practices behind scientific knowledge. By tracing how scientific observation becomes publication, it shows that science is not just objective output – but lived, embodied, and relational work. It is about the people, places, and processes that shape knowledge. A call for more open, transdisciplinary approaches to how we understand and share science.
Price: $67.00
Pages: 302
Publisher: transcript publishing
Imprint: transcript publishing
Series: Science Studies
Publication Date:
21 April 2026
Trim Size: 8.86 X 5.83 in
ISBN: 9783837679311
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
PHILOSOPHY / Epistemology, SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects, HISTORY / General
»This book is an eye-opening exploration of the hidden realities behind scientific work in the wild. As a field biologist, I found it deeply resonant – finally, someone has captured the emotional, messy, and often invisible labour that underlies the data we so neatly publish. This powerful work gives voice to the unseen ways of being and the mental shift that often occurs while conducting research in the wild. It reminds us that behind every data point lies a story – and that honouring those stories can transform not just how we do science, but why we do it.«
Jana Thierfelder, born in 1987, is a designer and anthropologist whose work bridges the arts and sciences. She has taught in the fields of ethnography, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and New Materialisms at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and Universität Bern. She has also coordinated several interdisciplinary projects that foster dialogue and collaboration between artistic and scientific communities. Her research draws on feminist and anthropological approaches to STS, with a focus on the sensory, bodily, material and institutional conditions under which knowledge is produced in the (natural) sciences.
