The research field Sociology of Technology deals with human-machine interaction in highly automated systems, with the control of complex socio-technical systems in the fields of energy and transport, and with their sustainable transformation.

In addition to traditional methods of empirical social research, innovative methods of computational social sciences are also used, such as agent-based modeling (ABM). It enables the experimental verification of model-based assumptions through computer simulation. A trademark of the department is the combination of analytical sociology and ABM, i.e. the sociological foundation of models of socio-technical systems.

From 2002 to 2020, the Department of Sociology of Technology, headed by Prof. Dr. Johannes Weyer, was part of the Department of Economics and Social Sciences, later the  Department of Economics, at the TU Dortmund University, and then part of the newly founded Department of Social Sciences since 2020. When Prof. Dr. Johannes Weyer left active service in 2022, there was a reorganization in the form of the senior professorship for sustainable mobility and the research area of sociology of technology at the Social Research Center Dortmund, both of which remain part of the Department of Social Sciences. The sociology of technology has its own website.Faculty