Zöller, Ira| Germany

Ira Zöller is a doctoral candidate and scientific researcher at the faculty of Philosophy at the Institute for Sociology at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She completed her undergraduate studies (ordinary bachelor) in journalism at Griffith College Cork, Ireland. She also completed a bachelor’s program in German Studies with a minor in Sociology and a master’s program in Sociology at Goethe-University Frankfurt. She teaches undergraduate courses in the bachelor’s programs Sociology and Social Sciences in the areas of feminist science and technology studies, medical sociology, and sociology of the body at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She is a member of the research network on global digital mental health called co-minded. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis on digital therapies for mental health.

Project at IAS-STS: : „Re-imagining Therapy. Digital Therapeutics for Mental Health“
My doctoral thesis focuses on ‘apps on prescription’. In this qualitative study, I analyse how experts conceptualise and develop these so-called ‘DiGAs’, drawing on interviews with developers, participant observation at healthcare conferences, and document analysis. The project is shaped by concepts from feminist science and technology studies, aiming to understand the materiality of the apps as more than passive, isolated products or tools created by developers, but rather to consider them within their cultural and historical context in Germany. It is precisely the negotiation of what digital therapies are supposed to be and are permitted to do (regulations) that influences the materiality of the application. By analysing the negotiations, the focus is placed on the performative dimensions: How these digital therapies are to support patients with mental health problems, can be understood as a specific response to questions about the present and future of understanding mental health and illness, hopes for future (digital and analogue) mental health care, research, medical standards and expertise.

Selected Publications

Kluzik, V. & Zöller, I. (2023). Von Selbstüberwachung zu ‚creative acts of making‘. Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme aktueller Impulse in der Debatte um digitale Selbstvermessungspraktiken. In Hoppe, K., Rüppel, J., von Verschuer, F. & Voigt, T. H. (eds.), Leben Regieren. Natur, Technologie und Gesellschaft im 21. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, S. 139–156.

Boese, V. & Zöller, I. (2021). Verbesserte Gefühle. Individualisierte Standardisierung im Mood-Tracking. Kuckuck – Notizen zur Alltagskultur, Sonderausgabe: Leben im Netz, 36–43.