From 1976-77, Knorr-Cetina received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. Shortly before her arrival in California, the French philosopher-turned-sociologist Bruno Latour and British sociologist Steven Woolgar began their well known "laboratory studies" at the Salk Institute in southern California. Korr-Cetina's work at Berkeley ultimately contributed to this network of laboratory studies in the late 1970s, which would eventually become the field of the Social Studies of Science and Technology. The empirical research conducted while at Berkeley also became her widely cited 1981 publication "The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science". Knorr-Cetina also received her Habilitation in sociology at the University of Bielefeld in 1981, and served as Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld from 1983 to 2001. Her work in the social studies of science during these years culminated in her widely-cited book "Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge," published in 1999.