Helga Nowotny

Who is Helga Nowotny?

Helga Nowotny is President of the European Research Council and Professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich. From 1998 on she was also Director of its Collegium Helveticum. She has been founding director of the post-graduate fellowship programme based at ETH “Society in science: the Branco Weiss Fellowship” until 2004, when she returned to her native Vienna. She received her doctorate in law at the University of Vienna and her Ph. D. in sociology at Columbia University, New York. She has held teaching and research positions at the Institute of Advanced Study in Vienna, King's College, Cambridge, UK, the University of Bielefeld, the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 1981-1982 and 2003-2004 she was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and from 1992-1999 Permanent Fellow at Collegium Budapest/Institute of Advanced Study. Before moving to ETH Zurich, she has been Professor and Head of the newly founded Institute for Theory and Social Studies of Science of the University of Vienna.