Democracy & Planetary Change

I’m co-founder and scientific manager of the Panel on Planetary Thinking at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, principle investigator of the Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program and co-convener of the Earth System Governance Project’s Working Group on Democracy. From 2022-2024, I'm a fellow of THE NEW INSTITUTE. In early 2024, I was a fellow of the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra.

I've been keen to work on big picture questions about democratic life on an ever-changing planet ever since I received a MA in political science, philosophy and sociology from Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg. Before joining Giessen University, I did a PhD at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, worked with a policy focus for the German Advisory Council on Global Change for the German Government (WBGU) in Berlin, stayed as a visiting fellow at the School of the Environment of the University of Toronto and was research group leader of the project Democratic (Re)Configurations of Sustainability Transformations at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. 

My work at these manifold institutions allowed me to research the interactions between democracy and planetary change theoretically as well as practically, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, and disciplinarily as well as interdisciplinary. My most recent book "The Politics of Deep Time" (Cambridge University Press) analyzes how planetary temporalities can be politically institutionalized.