Tanja Schneider
Associate Professor, Head of Section
Department of Technology, Management and Economics
Technology and Business Studies Division, Science and Technology Studies Section
Produktionstorvet
Building 424 Room 231
2800 Kgs. Lyngby
Danmark
Science and Technology Studies (STS) Social Studies of Markets Valuation Studies Critical Data Studies Food Studies Ethnography Digital Health Governance and accountability
Tanja Schneider is Head of the Science and Technology Studies Section at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS). She is also Research Affiliate at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society (InSIS) in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Associated Member of the STS Lab at the University of Lausanne. Tanja's research is rooted in science and technology studies (STS) and builds bridges to adjacent fields including the anthropology and sociology of food, health, markets, consumption, and digital sociology. Over time, her work has developed along three interrelated strands. 1. Emergence of New Research Fields and Communities A central strand of her research examines how new research fields and communities take shape. Her first academic appointment, as a Research Fellow in STS at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society at the University of Oxford (2008–2015), was especially formative. At Oxford, she contributed to a successful ESRC Open Research Access grant for an interdisciplinary project on "The ‘Neuro-turn’ in the European Social Sciences and Humanities (NESSHI): Impacts of neuroscience on economics, marketing and philosophy" (Lead PI: Paul Wouters, University of Leiden, NL) involving collaborators in Mainz, Leiden, and Paris. Together, the UK team (UK PI: Steve Woolgar) developed a sustained analysis of the emerging field of neuromarketing: how accountability is redistributed in neuromarketing laboratory practices, how neuromarketing researchers establish scientific credibility, and how they navigate the boundaries between science and industry. 2. Digital Technologies, Everyday Life, and Ethical Consumption A second strand of her work explores how digital technologies shape, mediate, and transform everyday life, and how social worlds, in turn, shape these technologies. Much of this research has focused on food and ethical consumption. As a James Martin Fellow at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, Tanja examined how civil society organisations and consumers use digital platforms, apps, and online campaigns to challenge food industry practices and advocate for ethical and sustainable food systems. Funded by the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food (2013–2016; PI: Stanley Ulijaszek), this research led to several journal publications and the ground-breaking edited volume Digital Food Activism (2018), which helped establish Digital Food Studies as a new subfield within food studies. This work laid the foundation for the FoodCoach research project (2020–2024), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. As PI, Tanja collaborated with computer scientists at ETH Zürich, the University of St. Gallen, and Sejong University to develop a mobile app for dietary monitoring and intervention, also leading the research stream on the technology’s social implications. The project highlighted both the potential and the limits of public participation in digital device development: although digital platforms increasingly mediate food practices, people tend to engage with digital platforms and apps that reinforce existing food interests and practices rather than transform entrenched eating practices. More recently, Tanja co-founded the Digital Foodscapes Network with colleagues in Germany and Austria. Initiated through a Volkswagen Foundation–funded scoping workshop (2025), the network serves as an international hub for collaboration on digital food research. 3. Valuation Studies and the Valuing of Sustainability A newer strand of her research contributes to debates in Valuation Studies by examining how sustainability is valued in practice. Her current book project, Venture Food: The Making of Food Sustainability (under contract with Oxford University Press), investigates how FoodTech innovations—including plant-based milk and meat alternatives—are valued in Switzerland, the United States, and Israel. The book demonstrates how “sustainability” is mobilized to make FoodTech appealing to investors and other stakeholders, addressing both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of valuation. Her expertise in food and sustainability also led to an invitation from SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) to co-author the 2023 report Towards Sustainable Food Consumption in Europe, produced for the Independent Group of Chief Scientific Advisors as part of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism. Currently she is co-editing a double special issue on “Valuing Sustainability” for Valuation Studies with Cornelius Heimstädt (University of Hamburg). The contributions examine how sustainability is valued across a wide range of cases—including sheep farming, ecotoxicology, basic research, microplastics, nuclear waste, wind energy, housing, AI, agricultural technology, microbial cleaning products, corporate sustainability, and pension funds. Across these diverse cases, the special issue shows that while calls to promote sustainability are widespread, they often fail to address the root causes of the socio-ecological crisis. Instead of interpreting this merely as greenwashing, we approach it as a valuation problem and outline an agenda for a valuation studies of sustainability. Tanja's research has been published in Science, Technology & Human Values; Science as Culture; The Sociological Review, Journal of Cultural Economy; BioSocieties; Information, Communication & Society; Geoforum; Science and Technology Studies; Journal of Consumer Culture; Consumption, Markets & Culture; Health Sociology Review; Medicine Anthropology Theory, European Journal of Marketing; and Journal of Marketing Management. Tanja also has experience with co-editing special issues in the Journal of Cultural Economy (forthcoming), European Journal of Marketing (2018) andBioSocieties (2015).