Communities as social units have been an object of considerable theoretical interest within STS. The emergence of such communities, however, has enjoyed far less attention. Likewise, the importance of shifts in funding practices has been well established (in science policy scholarship), but the ways in which funding arrangements and epistemic communities are entangled remain understudied. In this thesis I contribute to closing those gaps in the context of the study of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is a recent field that encompasses multiple approaches to epistemic practice. It can be described as a field that brings engineering closer to biology – although to different extents in different approaches. Despite its immaturity, synthetic biology has enjoyed considerable attention and support from a constellation of social actors.
In this thesis, I draw on an empirical study of the emergence of (an) epistemic community in synthetic biology. I do so with an emphasis on the European scene. I trace the emergence and trajectory of the (European) community in the context of the EU funding programmes, and zoom in on a (string of) project(s) dedicated to the synthetic biology of cyanobacteria. I temper this European focus with a study of iGEM (the competition and beyond). In particular, I trace the community as emerging propelled by community-making devices, which drove the enrolment / training of researchers; and explore the repertoire on which it was grounded.
I note the ways in which iGEM was a driver of epistemic purity, which was co-opted by and, yet, contrasts with the messy process of making a European community. In the latter context, I contend that funding played a key role in opening up/
closing down the trajectories of the community, in a process of co-production of synthetic biology and a particular European Union; and that funding drove the foregrounding of transient assemblages in the trajectory of the epistemic community which do not neatly fit along epistemic divides, conceptualising them as communities of need.
