On 13 May 2024, Krys Unverzagt successfully defended her PhD thesis “Enactments of Knowledge and Social Order in Participatory Modelling: An Ethnographic Perspective on the Relationship between Science and Democracy”, supervised by Prof. Jörg Niewöhner and Prof. Tobias Krüger, at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie (IfEE) and IRI THESys. She graduated with summa cum laude.
The thesis enquires into the relationship between science and democracy. It does so by developing a praxiographic perspective on system dynamics-inflected participatory modelling, a knowledge production practice in sustainability research. Ultimately, it demonstrates that the ‘co-production of science and social order’ can be located on the level of actual research practices, which enact several per se ‘multiple objects’, including ethics. It thus develops a novel understanding of the relationship between science and democracy, and a new programme for research on modelling.
Krys Unverzagt is currently the coordinator of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership.
We congratulate Krys on completing her doctoral thesis and wish her all the best for her future!
