Projects

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Ph.D. Project, Anthropology of Science and Technology

The project I currently work on most extensively is my dissertation on how social, material and conceptual aspects influence software development in the field of robotics. If you want to know more about that, have a look at my research page.

The Safer Fieldwork Project

I am a co-founder of the Safer Fieldwork Project, an initiative in which we contribute to interdisciplinary debates on fieldwork methodology, and hold workshops which provide researchers at various steps of their career with practical tools to make their fieldwork safer. I am very passionate about this work because I believe that a wider discussion around researcher safety can significantly improve our approach to fieldwork. For more information, have a look at the Safer Fieldwork Project website.

Studying Computer Science

I started studying computer science in the spring of 2020 out of curiosity. This decision has both brought me to robot soccer, the research field of my PhD project, and immensely helped me understand what I observed there. Studying computer science has also been very interesting on a personal level, because it differs quite a bit from social and cultural anthropology in both what I learn, and how I learn it. Also, being able to program and use computers in a more advanced fashion has enabled me to do fun things, such as programming robots in my PhD project, self-hosting a platform to collaborate in the Safer Fieldwork Project, or making generative art.

Master Thesis: “Technology of Freedom” or “Technology of Inequality”

I completed my master thesis in September 2020 and published it roughly a year later at the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg (you can find it in my publications). It is based on three-month ethnographic fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal, and explores the ways activists use their smartphones for their activist engagement and how that influences and is influenced by pre-existing inequalities.

Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK)

From 2016 to early 2022, I was a conflict researcher at HIIK. The Institute monitors conflicts worldwide throughout the year and publishes its findings in the annual Conflict Barometer. I conducted research on conflicts in South-East Asia and West Africa, for more information see my publications. I was also a member of HIIK’s IT department between 2017 and 2020.