Knowledge After Progress

Project Description: My concern with this research lies in understanding how science, regulators and publics at large respond to what Hannah Landecker refers to as ‘life as aftermath’, i.e. anthropogenic biologies shaped through and through by late industrialism. While life as aftermath is a direct result of progressive bio- and geopolitical interventions, its nature today by far exceeds these logics and escapes existing epistemic and regulatory grasps. The project tries to trace life as aftermath, to study responses to it and to contribute to means of addressing it co-laboratively with the natural and life sciences involved.

Contributors: Joerg Niewoehner, Research Group ‘Knowledge after Progress’, network ‘social studies of chemicals and chemistry (S²C²)

Project Description: Carbon recycling includes using CO₂ as feedstock in the synthesis of organic chemicals, adding to ideas of a circular carbon economy, and thereby trying to imitate the natural carbon cycle within the technosphere. This PhD project aims to follow carbon atoms ethnographically on this journey through different energy levels, oxidation states, and molecular – as well as social – environments, to study how this technological recreation of fundamental natural processes, and the constructed divide between a techno- and biosphere, affect chemical innovation within the larger picture of a stipulated sustainability transformation in/of the chemical industry.

Contributors: Thomas Roiss, Jörg Niewöhner (Advisor)

Project Description: This M.A. thesis is an ethnography of the collaboration between restoration practitioners, land managers, and community members in Atlanta, Georgia to create community-centered, resilient, and just forest stewardship. It seeks to weave together social science critique of environmental restoration and the rhetoric of invasion biology with the realities of grief and ecological change resulting from invasive species, development, and climate change in urban Southeastern forests.

Contributors: Iris Chen, Jörg Niewöhner (Advisor), Anne Rademacher (Advisor), Just Language for Ecology Education (Community Partners)

Project Description: Plastic pollution has become an all-encompassing problem deeply embedded in contemporary political, economic, and material realities. Here, the discovery of enzymes that can degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic commonly used in single-use packaging and textile fibers, have fueled academic, mediatic, and industrial expectations around possible techno-solutions to the “plastic problem”. By “following the enzyme,” this thesis aims to examine the roles of these biomolecules within current scaling efforts, looking into how the chemical-material qualities of PET-degrading enzymes shift as they move through different scales.

Contributors: Felipe Navarro, Patrick Bieler (Advisor), Jörg Niewöhner (Advisor)

Project Description: This master’s thesis research project investigates and argues how QSAR (Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship) models and EU chemical regulation have mutually influenced and shaped one another since the introduction of the 2007 REACH legislation. Grounded in Science and Technology Studies (STS), the project explores QSARs as both technical tools and epistemic-political instruments embedded in regulatory infrastructures. It examines how these models inform definitions of risk and toxicity while also being shaped by evolving regulatory standards, such as the OECD QSAR Assessment Framework. The study reflects on how regulatory systems operate through standardized molecular representations, which not only support decision-making but also shape broader understandings of chemical safety in everyday life.

Contributors: Cosimo Simoncini, Patrick Bieler (Advisor), Jörg Niewöhner (Advisor)