Materialization of Fairness
Gender in Design & Tech (Barbara Budrich Publishing 2026)
Women are still under-represented in tech and design areas and therefore their demands often neglected or overseen, we know that efforts need to be made to address the gender gap at all levels in academia and the workplace. For young researchers and professionals the amount of material on gender theories etc., the issues arising when dealing with tech and design from unilateral and stereotypical perspectives have grown in number over the last years. Unfortunately, only the “bad” side often gets into focus. What is lacking are the presentation of the materialization of real changes and the mechanisms used for this. This book is meant to show such efforts and projects from academia to industry and from product design to engineering also highlighting the interrelation between educational, social, economic and ecological factors in the pursuit not for plain equality but gender fairness.
Ethico Project
Horizon Europe (project member , project ended 2023)
Was an Erasmus + project of the European University of Technology. The main Idea was that Ethics traditionally understood as applied ethics is not equipped to deal with the questions posed by the relation between technological development and ecology. The application of pre-existing ethical frameworks has not led to the desired results and has been reduced to the introduction of ethics onto the engineering degree programs. This is partly to the cultural contexts of technological innovation and on the other hand to the sheer speed of technological change. The EthiCo project developed specific methodologies of the ethics and ecology within the education not just of engineers but all students within higher education and also a teacher training module for the teaching and integration of ethics into the curriculum (including engineering, natural sciences, business, arts and humanities). https://www.univ-tech.eu/projects
Design & Gender
(E-book, Institute of Design Research)
This is a open access book about the issues that women have to face today in product design – from education to praxis. In addition to a historical outline of the problem, it contains above all presentations of the work of internationally successful women designers as well as the evaluation of a series of interviews with women designers that shed light on unconscious mechanisms of genderization and their consequences. The basic idea was to provide an incentive to engage with contemporary product worlds and their female creators and not only with the male icons of design which is exactly what happens very often in design education due to a lack of proper material.
Philosophy and Design
Anthology, ed., Transcript Verlag, 2016
This book (anthology) is gathering insights into the philosophically long neglected entanglement of philosophical thoughts and the design discipline in general as it refers more to the daily and routinized experiences within live worlds. It deals with the neglect of everyday worlds by philosophy as a theory of art but also with ethical aspects in design. It was a follow up publication based on a international conference in Freiburg.
Das Realitätsproblem bei Jürgen Habermas und die Philosophie des Pragmatismus- für einen erweiterten Repräsentationalismus.
Monografie 2013
My first publication, which centers on truth and epistemological issues within the communication and consensus theory of Jürgen Habermas. It also explores the idea of a widened understanding of representationalism in relation to Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam and Charles Sanders Peirce. It was awarded by the Geschwister Böhringer Ingelheim Stiftung, Germany.
I have been presenting findings from my research in presentations as a key note, as moderator and host of conferences, in diverse media and articles. If you are interested in one of these topics, presentations or articles I’d be happy to share.
Here’s a selection from recent years:
Gender Justice, Darmstadt Louise Büchner, Lions Germany 2024
Speculative Design & Diversity, University of applied arts Basel Switzerland, 2023
Diversity in Design Studies, University of applied arts Basel Switzerland, 2022
Gender Equality & Diversity in Design conference, host and Speaker together with Schader Foundation Darmstadt 2021
Gender Equality and Diversity in Design Teaching, New European Bauhaus Conference, HBK Saar 2021
Design & Humanism (2021), HFG, Offenbach
Design Aesthetics between Aisthesis and Cognition , Academy of Arts, Stuttgart 2020
The Gendered Bauhaus, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Bauhausjubiläum, 2019
Articles
Form und Funktion. Eine kritische Betrachtung zeitgenössischer Designästhetik, Schwerpunktthema Design & Philosophie in: deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie DZPhil 2020; 68(3) , S. 410-424.
Philosophische Ästhetik und Design, in: Daniel Feige, Florian Arnold, Markus Rautzenberg (Hrsg.): Schriftenreihe des Weißenhofinstituts zur Architektur- und Designtheorie: Die Philosophie des Designs, transcript Verlag 2020, S 307-326
With all senses – Perspectives in Design Aesthetics / Mit allen Sinnen. Positionen der Designästhetik, in: Form, Nr.284, Region of Design, July/August 2019, S. 97-101. (English/German)
Philosophie und Design. Eine Einleitung, in: Design und Philosophie, Schnittstellen und Wahlverwandtschaften, transcript Verlag, 2017 , S. 6-17
