On the topicality of John Dewey’s democratic experimentalism
My research focuses on theory of the public sphere of John Dewey (1859-1952), the great American philosopher, educator and psychologist. His approach of a democratic experimentalism serves me as a methodological framework for a theory of contemporary digitally networked publics. This approach is useful for the inquiry into contemporary developments and challenges for democratic societies, such as the emergence of new collective actors, new forms of cooperation and social innovations to solve public issues.
The dissertation was submitted in July 2017 and defended in December 2017. [download table of contents]
My supervisor and first appraiser at the Institute for Philosophy of the University of Potsdam is Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Krüger, the editor of the German translation of John Dewey’s “The Public and its Problems.”
My second appraiser is Prof. Dr. Simone Dietz who helds the chair for practical philosophy at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. She published on public sphere theory, digital publics and fake news.
Research interests
My research interests include
- political and social philosopy, especially approaches toward democratic experimentalism, theories of participatory and deliberative democracy, the public sphere, civil society, and political consulting;
- socratic dialogue as a contemporary method of dealing with philosophical questions in academic and non-academic settings;
- philosophy of technology;
- philosophy of education;
- philosophy of religion and secularization;
- contemporary “open” movements, such as free/libre open source software, open access, open data and open government, the commons movement, peer production, and access to knowledge.