Welcome Prof. Boenig-Liptsin

Prof. Dr. Margarita Boenig-Liptsin (*1986) was recently appointed tenure-track Assistant Professor of Ethics, Technology, and Society. In a recent conversation Prof. Boenig-Liptsin mentioned that she considers herself lucky to have found ETH offering a position centered around ethics, technology, and society, which are exactly her interests. To find this combination of topics at a university, as technology-focused as ETH is, happened to be a perfect match. At ETH, students increasingly have opportunities to apply scientific knowledge to explore the relations between science, technology, and the human condition. Trained in the fields of Science, Technology and Society (STS) and history and philosophy of science and technology, Prof. Boenig-Liptsin will focus on ethics, citizenship, and public reason in a world where digital technologies and computing-informed knowing and acting are ubiquitous, and will dive into topics such as artificial intelligence and justice, digitization and democracy, and innovation in cities. As she puts it: Where, if not here, should conversations about these topics be happening?

Beyond the academic trajectory Prof. Boenig-Liptsin is looking forward to her time in Switzerland. She actually got married here, so moving to live in Zürich with her husband and three young sons is both a new experience and somewhat of a home-coming. Furthermore, she shared that she appreciates Europe’s sense of shared public life, and the sense of community: everything from bumping into strangers on Zürich trams to the vibrancy of public cultural offerings and diversity of languages and cultures. In contrast, life in Silicon Valley, where she moved from, tended to be more individualistic. As a recent arrival, Prof. Boenig-Liptsin has the impression that things in Switzerland function in a smooth way, and moving to Switzerland has been the easiest move so far. As she puts it: processes and structures appear to make sense for the people who created them. However, she is certain that friction between people and technology has to be somewhere, and sees part of her job to be to understand the apparent smoothness and uncover any frictions so as to learn from both about the particularly Swiss style of technology and society.

Europe is also interesting to Prof. Boenig-Liptsin because there is lots of intentional thinking about governance and technology happening here. In this context, she has the impression that there is active interest among some members of the public and in public policy and legal circles to understand how European values can evolve and co-exist with changing scientific and technological capabilities. In the next few years, she is looking forward to learning about and engaging with civil society activists and corporate leaders who are part of the local ethics, technology, and society scene in Zurich, Switzerland, and eventually Europe. Prof. Boenig-Liptsin is excited to learn about how people are engaging with topics such as urban development, digitization, transportation, and energy here. She wants to understand what the community has been doing - in particular, in the context of Switzerland’s long history of environmental activism. Prof. Boenig-Liptsin looks forward to building relationships and creating ways of working together with civil society and industry and to involve their expertise in her courses and develop novel training opportunities for students in the areas of technology and society.


Within ETH, Prof. Boenig-Liptsin is excited to build connections to computer scientists, electrical engineers, and data scientists. Interdisciplinary work on topics such as justice and ethics are crucial, she says. When it comes to successful cooperation Prof. Boenig-Liptsin emphasizes translation of core concepts and ways of seeing between disciplines. This requires the ability to recognize and value the diverse perspectives on shared questions that different disciplines bring. Scholars in both the social sciences and technology need to make an effort to make their work understandable for the other side. However, cooperation should go beyond research, and she hopes that it will also apply to evolving how students are taught about the interaction of technology and society in the 21st century technical university. The Science in Perspective curriculum, as well as other forms of training for technical students could provide pathways for a sustainable effort to foster constructive critical thinking. While technical professionals might consider social components such as legal, policy, or philosophy issues as “extras” or topics to be dealt with by others, Prof. Boenig-Liptsin points out that their work is already social through and through. For example, scientists and engineers are motivated by big visions of positive societal transformation or answering global challenges and so their projects are already normative. To make sense of these latent normativities, open them up to broader discussion, and see them in light of historical experience, humanities and interpretive social sciences can provide invaluable theoretical and practical tools. This includes, for example, understanding of the capitalist structures in which we live and how they shape the ways technologies are developed and applied. Prof. Boenig-Liptsin is dedicated to help students understand their role, and their agency, both within a company and the capitalist context. She is determined to inform students about their leverage and enable students to examine and act on their values, in particular in their role as future employees - where they go out of the lab and into society.

When it comes to her research, Prof. Boenig-Liptsin has foundational questions about the relationships between who we are as human beings, (e.g. how we know ourselves and choose to live) and how we know the world and build possible worlds with science and technology. She is grateful for the invitation her professorship provides to think about the link between technology and being human, and to make this relevant to current debates, from immigration and belonging, to climate change mitigation. She sees this work as part of a greater effort to engage with GESS colleagues and students to evolve the role of humanities and interpretive social sciences in a world-class technical university like ETH.


Prof. Boenig-Liptsin is aware that societies continue to ask similar questions about what it means to live a meaningful life and how to strive towards human flourishing, and that there are continuitites with what people struggle with. While the historical context and social orders are carried by innovations, her research focus, as she puts it, does not have to be on the latest emerging technologies. She says: “if we want to look forward to the latest emerging technologies we should also be looking backwards and all around us at how other people and in other times have navigated these questions.”. Thus, Prof. Boeing-Liptsin will explore the heterogeneous landscapes of individuals and societies transforming their ways of relating, their values, and their ways of life through the knowledge and tools that they deploy to build desirable futures.