Dr. Krystin (Krys) Unverzagt
I am an STS researcher and ethnographer. Before starting my PhD in European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HUB), I studied ‘Politics and Society’ in Bonn and Copenhagen, ‘Science, Technology, and Society’ at UCL in London, and worked in the public sector in Bonn and Berlin. At HUB, I was part of the interdisciplinary Graduate Programme of the Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys). In my PhD project, I investigated participatory modelling practices in sustainability research. Against an STS backdrop, my doctoral thesis sets up a conversation between ethnographic research, the theory and practice of (participatory) modelling, political theory, ethical theory, social theory, and philosophy of science. It lays out a novel perspective on democracy and science, locating their relationship in the enactment of various ‘multiple objects’ relevant to ‘social order’, such as ‘knowledge’, ‘ethics’, and ‘people’. ‘Making optimality’, my current research project, will investigate optimality-inflected research practices, what they do, what they enable, afford, and foreclose, which world(s) they make, and for whom. Outside my office hours, I read poetry, fiction and non-fiction, care for plants and grow vegetables. I also spend a lot of time mending and making things — mostly drawings, paintings, clothes, and music.
- optimisation
- machine learning
- simulation modelling
- participatory modelling
- technologies of participation
- sustainability
- human-environment research
- (more-than-human) ethics
- public engagement in science/publicly engaged science
- situated knowledge
- relational thinking
- ecology
- democracy