Prof Jenny Tilsen is an Assistant Professor at Plaksha. Her research and teaching is focused on understanding the different ways that science and technoscience are made. She is interested in how communication practices, infrastructures, values, and ethics influence the construction of knowledge, and how knowledge cultures and technologies are negotiated across different social and environmental contexts. Her work draws from science and technology studies, history of science, pedagogy, and philosophy to address the potential for individuals and groups to change how to interact and produce knowledge. Her research often takes up practices like storytelling, games, and other creative expressions as a way to foster transformative change. She is the creator of STEMtelling, a practice-based storytelling method grounded in social epistemology. Additionally, she uses speculative fiction as a world building tool in interdisciplinary collaborations to work towards sustainable and just futures. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher studying cultural change on a National Science Foundation grant, Revolutionizing Engineering Departments, at Bucknell University.
In the classroom, Prof Tilsen treats science and technology as lived experiences, infrastructures, and practices that shape how we interact with ourselves, each other, and the world. Her courses invite students to critically and imaginatively engage with theory alongside everyday interactions to transform their own ideas about the relationship between science and society, and their role in it.
She is a member of The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), and the International Network of Engineering Studies (INES). She is also serving a two year term (2026 - 2028) as an associate board member of Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies. Outside of academia, she likes to ride her bicycle across long distances, cook with family and friends, and make art.
