I am a senior lecturer at the working group Political Sociology (Bielefeld University, Germany). I obtained my PhD in International Relations at the Freie Universität Berlin. I have researched and taught at Cornell University, UFZ Leipzig, the Centre for Global Cooperation Research Duisburg as well as the University of Potsdam.
In my research, I describe the dynamics of knowledge politics in environmental affairs across scales. Claims to knowledge permeate current debates about climate change and biodiversity loss. Often, these claims are based on scientific evidence and technological know-how, but likewise on experience, social positionality, and varying cosmologies; they are competing offering different problem-frames and corresponding solutions.
Given this multivocality of environmental knowledge, I ask questions such how claims to knowledge are rendered authoritative and black-boxed, whose knowledge is declared as relevant, and what future visions guide transformation processes. This set of questions unveils the dynamics of knowledge politics that are intertwined with issues of power and justice.
My work opens-up for more plural engagements with environmental problems. It sensitizes to both the deeply social and political as well as the material and technological aspects of transformation. All of those are important to consider, when envisioning the future otherwise.
Trained in International Relations, I extend existing political science perspectives by integrating Science and Technology Studies (STS) and sociological approaches. My theoretical interventions evolve around the concepts of authority, objects, performance, and translation. Collectively, they draw the contours of a political epistemology that is sensitive to the embedded and socio-material nature of knowledge practices.