Welcome to the THCL project website!

The Germany-Austrian research project “Towards a holistic conception of life? Epistemic presumptions and socio-cultural implications of systems biology” (THCL) is part of the ELSA-GEN

initiative for collaborative research projects on ethical, legal, socio-cultural and economic aspects of genomics and related sciences. It investigates and interrogates the current systems approach in the life sciences with respect to its epistemic and societal implications. It more specifically asks: What are the epistemic preconditions, socio-cultural implications and innovative potentials of the scientific concepts and practices of systems biology? It is designed to fill a gap in science and technology studies (STS) and technology assessment (TA) of systems biology by launching an extensive empirical analysis of this newly emerging and continually expanding scientific field. A detailed description of the project will soon be available.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (project no.: 01GP0904) and by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). It officially started in January 2010 and will be completed in April 2013.

THCL is a joint research project carried-out the Research Centre for Biotechnology, Society and the Environment (FSP BIOGUM) – Research Group Medicine and Neurosciences based at the University of Hamburg and the Institute for Technology Assessment (ITA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.