Seminar
The transformation paradox of emerging fields: a Bourdieusian approach to the bibliometric study of sustainability science
- Marco Schirone
- Date
- Friday 18 September 2026
- Time
- Series
- CWTS Research Seminars
- Location
-
Willem Einthoven
Kolffpad 1
2333 BN Leiden - Room
- Online & common rooms at CWTS
About the seminar
How can a field that promotes transformation and interdisciplinarity simultaneously reproduce the academic hierarchies it seeks to transcend? In this seminar, Marco Schirone presents his doctoral thesis, which examines sustainability science as an emerging interdisciplinary field, mobilising Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to analyse how symbolic capital, legitimacy, and recognition become structured into durable institutional forms during field formation. Drawing on four complementary studies spanning three decades, the thesis combines bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, geometric data analysis, and qualitative content analysis, using citation and co-authorship patterns, journal editorials, and the composition of editorial boards. The analysis identifies three historical phases, Foundation (1993–2002), Introspection (2003–2012), and Diversification (2013–2022), and shows how editorial discourse functions as a central site of symbolic struggle, where competing visions of sustainability science and rival claims to definitional authority are articulated and contested. By treating bibliometric indicators not as neutral measures but as socially embedded instruments of valuation, the thesis offers a critical account of how emerging interdisciplinary fields institutionalise authority while reproducing academic stratification, often in tension with their programmatic commitments to transdisciplinarity.
About the speaker
Marco Schirone is a bibliometric analyst and librarian at Chalmers University of Technology and holds a PhD in information studies from the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University of Borås. His doctoral thesis combined bibliometric and network analysis with qualitative analysis of editorial discourse, grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, to show how an emerging field with transformative ambitions comes to reproduce the academic hierarchies it seeks to change. He is also president of SFIS, the Swedish Association of Information Specialists.