I am a PhD student and research associate funded by the DFG at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with a focus on science and technology studies. I received my M.A. here in May 2018 for my thesis on “Knowledge Practices in the Modelling of ‘Socio-Ecological Coevolutions’“. Before, I studied social and cultural anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and Aix-Marseille Université, France. Departing from classical laboratory studies, I am interested in current knowledge production in the environmental sciences (especially mathematical modeling and computer simulations), human-environment relations, complexity science and research methodologies in general.

Contact: anja.klein@hu-berlin.de

Find me also at: IRI THEsys | Institute for European Ethnology | ResearchGate | CECO (Code Ethnography Collective) | Mastodon

PhD research (funded by DFG project no. 497511081): An ethngoraphy of social-ecological modeling: situating materiality, difference and complexity

Mathematical and computational modeling has become a central knowledge practice in scientific knowledge production across the disciplines. Especially environmental modeling of the climate and the earth system hast gained a certain political attention. My PhD-project takes the modeling of human-environment processes in the environmental sciences as an object of ethnographic inquiry. The central research question is: How are human-environment- relations understood, conceptualized and done in modeling? I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork with working groups of modelers who follow very different approaches in modeling these dynamics: First, the modeling of social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems on a local to regional scale and secondly the integration of “human dynamics” into already existing large scale earth system or land-use models.

The aims of this project are disciplinary as well as interdisciplinary. From a perspective in anthropological Science and Technology Studies, I am interested in understanding the ontological assumptions and practices in modeling human agency, collectivity, environmental dynamics, complexity, the social etc. and how these produce frictions with concepts in anthropology. Concerning interdisciplinarity, I am interested in (1) how the working groups practice interdisciplinarity, (2) how translation and communication between modeling and anthropological methods concerning their respective boundaries and benefits might be enhanced and (3) the comparison of the cases aims at operationalizing the notion of “situated knowledges” in order to support our development of a framework of “Situated Modeling” at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys, HU Berlin).

Publications

2024

Anja Klein, Krystin Unverzagt, Rossella Alba, Jonathan Donges, Tilman Hertz, Tobias Krueger, Emilie Lindkvist, Romina Martin, Jörg Niewöhner, Hannah Prawitz, Maja Schlüter, Luana Schwarz, Nanda Wijermans

From situated knowledges to situated modelling: a relational framework for simulation modelling Journal Article

In: Ecosystems and People, vol. 20, iss. 1, pp. 2361706, 2024.

Abstract | Links

@article{Klein2024,

title = {From situated knowledges to situated modelling: a relational framework for simulation modelling},

author = {Anja Klein and Krystin Unverzagt and Rossella Alba and Jonathan Donges and Tilman Hertz and Tobias Krueger and Emilie Lindkvist and Romina Martin and Jörg Niewöhner and Hannah Prawitz and Maja Schlüter and Luana Schwarz and Nanda Wijermans},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2024.2361706},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-06-01},

urldate = {2024-06-01},

journal = {Ecosystems and People},

volume = {20},

issue = {1},

pages = {2361706},

abstract = {In this paper we extend the use of a relational approach to simulation modelling, a widely used knowledge practice in sustainability science. Among modellers, there is awareness that model results can only be interpreted in view of the assumptions that inform model construction and analysis, but less systematic questioning of those assumptions. Moreover, current methodological discussions tend to focus on integrating social and ecological dynamics or diverse knowledges and data within a model. Yet choices regarding types of modelling, model structure, data handling, interpretation of results and model validation are not purely epistemic. They are entangled with values, contexts of production and use, power relations, and pragmatic considerations. Situated Modelling extends a relational understanding of the world to scientific knowledge production and with that to modelling itself in order to enable a systematic interrogation of these choices and to research social-ecological transformations relationally. To make tangible the situatedness of simulation modelling, we build on existing practices and describe the situatedness of three distinct modelling approaches. We then suggest four guiding principles for Situated Modelling: 1. attending to the apparatus of knowledge production that is socially and materially embedded and produced by e.g. research infrastructures, power relations, and ways of thinking; 2. considering how agency is distributed between model, world, data, modeller in model construction; 3. creating heterogenous collectives which together occupy the formerly individualised subject position; and 4. using agonism as an epistemic virtue to retain and work with significant differentiations of social-ecological dynamics throughout the modelling process.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

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2021

Patrick Bieler, Lauren Cubellis, Jonna Josties, Anja Klein, Jörg Niewöhner, Christine Schmid

Ethnografische Theorie ko-laborativ fügen Journal Article

In: Hamburger Journal für Kulturanthropologie (HJK), vol. 13, pp. 522-555, 2021.

Links

2019

Jörg Niewöhner, Patrick Bieler, Milena Bister, Janine Hauer, Maren Heibges, Jonna Josties, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Ruzana Liburkina, Julie Sascia Mewes, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz (Ed.)

After Practice. Thinking through Matter(s) and Meaning Relationally. Volume I Collection

Panama Verlag, Berlin, 2019.

Jörg Niewöhner, Patrick Bieler, Milena Bister, Janine Hauer, Maren Heibges, Jonna Josties, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Ruzana Liburkina, Julie Sascia Mewes, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz (Ed.)

After Practice. Thinking through Matter(s) and Meaning Relationally. Volume II Collection

Panama Verlag, Berlin, 2019.

Sabine Biedermann, Patrick Bieler, Milena Bister, Sascha Cornejo Puschner, Adina Dymczyk, Dennis Eckhardt, Janine Hauer, Maren Heibges, Dženeta Hodžić, Jonna Josties, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Céline Lauer, Ruzana Liburkina, Jörg Niewöhner, Stefan Reinsch, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz, Itzell Torres, Krystin Unverzagt, Jorge E. Vega-Marrot

Current work in the Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations: Doing research in a more-than-thought collective Journal Article

In: EASST Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2019.

Links

From the Collaboratory Social Anthropology & Life Sciences to the Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations Journal Article

In: EASST Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2019.

Links

2018

Anja Klein

Knowledge Practices in the Modelling of "Socio-Ecological Coevolutions": On Simplification, Experimentation, Visualization and Alignment Masters Thesis

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, 2018.

Abstract | Links

@mastersthesis{Klein2018,

title = {Knowledge Practices in the Modelling of "Socio-Ecological Coevolutions": On Simplification, Experimentation, Visualization and Alignment},

author = {Anja Klein},

doi = {10.18452/19475},

year  = {2018},

date = {2018-10-17},

address = {Berlin},

school = {Humboldt Universität zu Berlin},

abstract = {This thesis builds on exploratory ethnographic research with an interdisciplinary research group that constructed mathematical models and computer simulations of complex socio-ecological transformations. In giving a detailed and empirically grounded account of modelling practices in a specific setting this work develops a basic understanding of modelling practices from the perspective of social anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. It operationalizes several concepts such as bifurcation, degree of irreversibility and alignment. Theoretical discussions concern collectivity in scientific practice, epistemology of computer simulations, materiality in experiments, laboratory studies and ontology. Building and running models can be described as a process of iteratively and continuously aligning model formats through material-semiotic practices of simplification, experimentation and visualization. These practices are each related to some model formats more than to others. The notion of “format” captures the different ways in which “the model” appears in everyday practices: as equations and code, but also as visualizations, plots of model output, descriptive text in a paper and as mental models. In a productive misalignment, each format contributes something particular to the model. Finally, this work problematizes underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions about “the social”, “the natural” and “the hybrid” as separate spheres, which is necessary in order to come to terms with hybrid, socio-ecological processes as they become more and more pressing in the Anthropocene. With reference to “Bayesian Anthropology” (Kockelman) it tentatively suggests an alternative framing of these ontological assumptions and the resulting problems of inference.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {mastersthesis}

}

Patrick Bieler, Jonna Josties, Ruzana Liburkina, Julie Sascia Mewes, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Jörg Niewöhner, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz

Assembling Comparators – Assembling Reflexivities Journal Article

In: Science as Culture, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 563-568, 2018.

Abstract | Links