Higher Seminar with Tanja Schneider from DTU at Tema T, Linköping University

[Claudia Strambo]

Hello,

We would like to invite you to our next Higher Seminar at Tema-T, Linköping University, with Tanja Schneider, from the Technical University of Denmark, on May 20th, from 13:15 to 15:00.

Please find the title, abstract, bio and Zoom link below.

Best regards,

Claudia Strambo

On behalf of Anna Storm, Kristin Zeiler and Harald Rohracher

Counter‑Valuing FoodTech: Contesting Investor‑Driven Sustainability 

Abstract:

This seminar explores how FoodTech—ranging from plant‑based products to cultivated meat—is made valuable within a venture capital–driven innovation economy. I show how entrepreneurs strategically frame these novel foods as sustainable and efficient solutions in order to attract high‑stakes investment, and how this financial logic shapes which food futures become possible. Rather than treating FoodTech’s promises of efficiency, planetary responsibility, and inevitable technological progress as self‑evident, I analyse how diverse actors actively resist these promissory framings. I approach such resistance as a practice of counter‑valuing, through which alternative orders of sustainability are articulated and defended. By tracing disputes over labeling, heritage, ecological impact, and cultural meaning across regulatory, legal, and public arenas, I show how NGOs, social movements, incumbent industries, and regulators unsettle the investor‑led assetization of food innovation. These controversies challenge the transformation of novel foods into financial assets, expose the fragility of FoodTech’s valuation practices, and question whose values these futures serve. In doing so, they reveal alternative visions of sustainability that refuse speculative, finance‑centric economizations. By following how actors contest FoodTech’s promises, the talk highlights how sustainability itself is destabilized, problematized, and increasingly litigated. Such counter‑valuing practices challenge innovation‑centric framings that privilege investor authority while positioning citizens as passive consumers. Instead, they reopen questions about whose values shape sustainable futures and how responsibility for these futures is distributed. Ultimately, the talk argues that resistance is generative: it reveals alternative food futures and makes visible the sociotechnical reordering embedded in investor‑driven visions of sustainability.

Bio:

Tanja Schneider is Associate Professor and Head of the Science and Technology Studies Section at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and a Research Affiliate at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Science, Innovation & Society (InSIS). Her research sits at the intersections of science and technology studies and economic sociology/market studies, focusing on how emerging technologies shape agency, accountability, and autonomy in digital societies. She has studied the formation of new scientific field (e.g., neuromarketing), the role of digital platforms in everyday consumption, and the financialization and valuation of innovation, especially in FoodTech. She is first editor of Digital Food Activism (2018) and has published in journals including Science, Technology & Human Values, Science as Culture, The Sociological Review, and Journal of Cultural Economy.

ZOOM INFORMATION

Claudia Strambo is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Higher Seminar with Tanja Schneider from DTU

Time: May 20, 2026 01:00 PM Stockholm

Join Zoom Meeting

https://liu-se.zoom.us/j/68627148958

Meeting ID: 686 2714 8958