ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gabriele Abels, professor of comparative and European at the Institute of Political , University of Tübingen. Her interest are in the fi eld of European integration, assess- ment, participation and democratization, gender studies; recent publi- cations: Demokratische Technikbewertung (Bielefeld: Transcript 2004 together with Alfons Bora); Trade and Human Rights: Inter- and Supranational Regulation of GMOs and ART. In: E. Montpetit, C. Rothmayr, F. (Eds.): Th e Politics of Biotechnology in North America and Europe: Policy Networks, Institutions and Internationalization (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2007); Citizen Involvement in Public Policy-making: Does it Improve Democratic Legitimacy and Accountability? Th e Case of pTA. Interdisciplinary Information 13 (1) 2007: 103–116.

Alfons Bora is professor of sociology at Bielefeld University (). Since 1999 he has been holding a chair for technology assessment. He is a member of the German Council. He studied and sociology, received his PhD from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and his habilitation from the Free University of . He worked as a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Penal Law, research unit for criminology, and at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (Wissenschaft szentrum Berlin, WZB). Recent publications include: Technoscientifi c normativity and the ‘iron cage’ of law, forth- coming in Science, Technology & Human Values, Summer 2009; with Heiko Hausendorf, Analysing Citizenship Talk. Social Positioning in Political And Legal Decision-Making Processes, Amsterdam: Benjamins 2006; with Heiko Hausendorf, Participatory science governance revis- ited: normative expectations versus empirical evidence. In: Science and Public Policy 33 (2006), 7, 478–488; with Gabriele Abels, Demokratische Technikbewertung, Bielefeld: transcript 2004.

Matthias Baier, LL.D., Uppsala university, PhD in sociology of law, Lund university; Lecturer at the division of sociology of law, Lund uni- versity since 2003, tenure. He has been researcher in the PARAYDS 300 about the authors program 2001–2004 and in the Baltic Master program 2005–2006. He is currently sociology of law coordinator for the Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability (Lucid), a ten year grant 2008–2018. His main inter- ests are in socio-legal aspects on participation, environmental prob- lems and in mass media and the law. He is author of Norm och rättsregel (Norms and rules), a thesis on environmental problems and norm for- mation; “A visual self image of the legal authority”, Social and legal studies. 2002 with Bo Carlsson; the textbook Om normer (On norms) with Måns Svensson, fortcoming spring 2009 and editor of Participative aspects on law – a sociolegal perspective, forthcoming winter 2008.

Elena Collavin is a social psychologist. She lectures at the Communication Department of the University of San Diego, California. She applies discourse analysis and ethnography to the study of social controversies. Her doctoral research focused on the public debate sur- rounding food biotechnologies in Italy. She is currently researching the practices and discourses of food in Italy and in the United States in a comparative perspective. Her Doctoral thesis “Food biotechnologies in Italy: a social psychological study” was published by the University of Helsinki in 2007. In 2008 she published one article on the rhetoric of food marketing and (with Alessandro Tavano) a book chapter on the pragmatics of the Friulian language.

Heiko Hausendorf received his PhD from the University of Bielefeld (Germany) and holds a chair in German Linguistics at the University of Zurich () since 2007. Till then he was a professor of German Linguistics at the (Germany). His research topics are located in the fi eld of sociolinguistics and linguistic pragmatics with a special interest in conversation analysis. Main focuses of research are: methodology of text and discourse analysis; language and social belonging; social categorization and positioning; narrative interaction; talk in institutions; language and discourse acquisition. Selection of recent publications: Zugehörigkeit durch Sprache. Eine linguistische Studie am Beispiel der deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Tübingen: Niemeyer 2000. Analysing Citizenship Talk. Social Posi- tioning in Political and Legal Decision-Making Processes. Amsterdam et al.: John Benjamins 2006 (ed. volume, in co-operation with Alfons Bora). Vor dem Kunstwerk. Interdisziplinäre Aspekte des Sprechens und Schreibens über Kunst (ed. volume). München: Fink 2007.