Research Areas and Expertise

I am a sociologist with a strong empiricist commitment informed by social and cultural transformation. Facing actual global socio-cultural frictions and increasing socio-material disparities, my claim is that social cohesion and progress cannot rely exclusively on shared experiential backgrounds any more. As a consequence, a social science of experience is needed, as experiental differences and breaks constitute, on the one hand, the basis for conflict and violence; however they can, on the other hand, give way for innovation and new types of heterogeneous cooperation. My queries span from the political field (social cohesion) to nature-society enactments within the planetary ecological crisis in the knowledge society. In our current FIELDS research project I combine conceptual research with the creation of “third knowledge spaces” linking the social with global marine sciences to promote better solutions for sustainable aquatic futures.

Research Projects & Funding

2022-2025

Principle Investigator, Research Project “Experiencing Nature and Society. A Multi-sited Inquiry into Marine and Ethnographic Field Sciences”, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), reference number BO 3268/4-1. More info here.

2017-2020

Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme “Ecologies of Social Cohesion. Heterogeneity and Hybridity in Synchronic and Diachronic Comparison”, Kassel University, with Prof. Dr Jörn Lamla, Dr. Franziska Müller, Prof. Dr Anke Ortlepp, Prof. Dr Kai Ruffing, Prof. Dr Sabine Ruß-Sattar (AZ. P/979).

2016-2017

Grants for supplementary teaching assignments for the empirical project-based learning Seminar “Soziologie global” at the Graduate Centre for Environmental Research and Teaching at Kassel University (GradZ).

2012-2014

German-Italian-French Research Conferences at the Villa Vigoni, Italy on the Topic “Wozu Pragmatismus? Zur Relevanz des Pragmatismus in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften” with Albert Ogien (CEMS/EHESS Paris) and Roberto Frega (Universitá di Bologna), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Villa Vigoni (Italy) and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (France), AZ. GZ: BO 3268/2-1 & AOBJ: 591480.

2012

Travel Grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for an Ethnography of the Expedition “Our Planet reviewed. Estimating Biodiversity in Papua New Guinea and on the Planet” in Madang, Papua New Guinea AZ. 50.12.0.033.

•       ​Symmetrical observations, Part I: http://blog-preprod-v2.laplaneterevisitee.org/index.php?post/2012/12/06/Symmetrical-observations%2C-Part-I

•       Symmetrical observations, Part II: http://blog-preprod-v2.laplaneterevisitee.org/index.php?post/2012/12/05/Symmetrical-observations%2C-Part-II

2011-2012

Postdoc Grant from the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for an Ethnography on Biodiversity Research at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

1997-2006

Grant from the Hans Böckler Foundation (Doctoral Sponsorship, 2004-2006); Grant from the Hans Böckler Foundation (Student Sponsorship, 1997-2005).