Steve Woolgar

British sociologist

Stephen William Woolgar (born 14 February 1950) is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he wrote Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (1979).

Stephen Woolgar holds a BA (First Class Honours) in engineering and a PhD in sociology, both at the University of Cambridge.

Woolgar was Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Human Sciences and director of CRICT (Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology) at Brunel University until 2000. He then held the Chair of Sociology and Marketing at the University of Oxford where he was a fellow at Green Templeton College. He is the former director of Science and Technology Studies within Oxford's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society. He is (2022) now retired from Oxford, and also from Linköping University where he worked more briefly in the late 2010s.

Woolgar is a contributor in the fields of science studies, sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the science and technology studies (STS) (especially on the topic of sociology of machines). He wrote Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (1979), a social constructionist account of the practice of science, together with Bruno Latour, who he first met in California when Latour was conducting hie early ethnographic work in scientific facilities. Woolgar has subsequently adopted an even more relativist stance, for example in his 1988 book Science: The Very Idea. Woolgar espouses a radically relativist and constructionist position. In 1985 he wrote a paper proposing a sociological approach towards machines and AI, in which he outlined the importance of associating AI with the field of sociology.

Recipient of the 2008 John Desmond Bernal Prize, awarded annually by the Society for Social Studies of Science to an individual judged to have made a distinguished contribution to the field. Fulbright Scholarship and a Fulbright Senior Scholar award. Academy of Social Sciences, 2010.