Research group for the ethnographic inquiry into ecologies, infrastructures, bodies and knowledges
Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations

Anja Klein

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

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

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

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

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