News
The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 1187) “Media of Cooperation” welcomes four new Mercator Fellows: Azadeh Ganjeh, Olga Goriunova, Maija Hirvonen, Christopher Salter and Jürgen Streeck. These outstanding researchers will bring their academic expertise and innovative research approaches to CRC 1187 this year.
About the Mercator Fellowship at CRC 1187
To strengthen academic collaboration within the research network, CRC 1187 awards Mercator Fellowships to outstanding researchers from Germany and abroad. Mercator Fellows conduct research for an extended period in close collaboration with one or more of the sub-projects involved in CRC 1187, addressing questions relating to digital, data-intensive media. Together with the regular members, our Mercator Fellows pursue the shared goal of further developing interdisciplinary approaches and helping to shape the CRC’s research programme. The inclusion of these renowned researchers not only strengthens the international network of CRC 1187, but also promotes the transfer of knowledge and ideas that is of central importance to the CRC’s research into the digital present.
The Mercator Fellowship is a module within the funding programmes of the German Research Foundation and serves to enable intensive and long-term research exchange.
About the current Mercator Fellows
Dr. phil. Azadeh Ganjeh
Professur für Performative Künste im Sozialen
Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg
Über Azadeh Ganjeh
Azadeh Ganjeh is a performance artist, scholar, dramaturg and activist, and a member of the collective Rebel-Ist-hah!. Born in Tehran, Iran, she holds a Master’s degree in theatre directing from Tehran Art University and received her doctorate in 2017 in philosophy with a focus on theatre studies from the University of Bern.
Azadeh specialises in socially engaged and site-specific performances, participatory productions, performative interventions in urban space, and community theatre for socio-political empowerment. Her research interests include narratives and politics of the stage, the performativity of public events, the performative interaction of body and space, emancipation through the performing arts, aesthetics of performativity and space, and activism in performance art.
After working as a professor at the University of Tehran, she taught at numerous European universities and has been working since April 2022 as a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture at the University of Hildesheim. In October 2024, she took up the professorship for Performative Arts in Society at the University of the Arts in Society in Ottersberg, where she combines artistic practice with critical research on performance and social change.
Dr. Olga Gorinuova
Professor of Media Arts
Royal Holloway, University of London.
Über Olga Gorinuova
Olga Goriunova is Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a cultural theorist, working across technology, philosophy and aesthetics. Her latest book, Ideal Subjects. The Abstract People of AI (2025) explores how data and artificial intelligence abstract people into new kinds of subjects. The questions of subjectivation in relation to art and technology have been central to her work. Her previous book, Bleak Joys. Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility (co-authored, 2019) explores aesthetics, ethics and ecology during times of multiple crises. This work traces connections between large scale systems such as ecologies, technical infrastructures or mechanisms of calculation and processes of subjectivation. Her first book Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet (2012) conceptualises aesthetic and political engagements with technology at the dawn of the World Wide Web, proposing the concepts of organisational aesthetics and art platforms to understand collective art practices and art movements of the 1990s and early 2000s. This book is based on her work as a co-organiser of software art repository Runme.org and a co-curator of software art festivals (four editions of the Readme festival between 2002 and 2005 in Moscow, Helsinki, Aarhus and Dortmund) and other exhibitions. She edited or co-edited four Readme publications, the most significant of which is Readme. Software Arts and Cultures (Aarhus University Press, 2004). She is also the editor of Fun and Software: Exploring Pleasure, Pain and Paradox in Computing (2014) and a co-founder and co-editor of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies.
Prof.‘in Dr. Maija Hirvonen
Professor for German language, culture and translation
Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences | Language Studies | German
Tampere University, Finland
Über Maija Hirvonen
Maija Hirvonen is a full professor in German language, culture and translation at the Languages Unit of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University. She leads BA, MA and PhD studies in German linguistics and translation. She is director of Langnet, the Network of Doctoral Programmes in Language Sciences in Finland, and sits on the steering board for Plural (the multidisciplinary research centre for languages and cultures). She co-leads the Tampere Accessibility Unit and the Multimodality in Translation and Interpreting research group.
Her research specialisms include:
- accessibility (esp. audio description)
- multimodal and intermodal translation and interpreting
- blind-sighted and other asymmetrical interaction
- teamwork
- distributed/interactive intelligence and the interface of cognition and interaction
- human-centered machine learning (esp. machine perception, automatic video description, audio captioning)
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Streeck
Department of Communication Studies, Moody College of Communication
University of Texas at Austin, USA
Über Jürgen Streeck
Jürgen Streeck conducts research in the field of multimodal interaction, focusing in particular on the coordination of language, gesture and gaze, as well as the social meaning of actions in communication. He has contributed to the development of multimodal interaction research and engages with the connections between language, music and orality, particularly in hip-hop. His academic work has been recognised with several awards, including the Georg-Gottfried-Gervinus Fellowship (2013–2014). He was a Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld.
Streeck received his doctorate in 1981 from the Free University of Berlin in linguistics and has been Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin since 2013. Previously he was Associate Professor in the same department and also held a professorship in linguistics at the Free University of Berlin. In addition, he has held visiting professorships and fellowships at universities including the University of Oldenburg, the University of Vienna and the University of Utrecht.
Among his major publications is the 2009 book Gesturecraft: The Manu-facture of Meaning, in which Streeck examines how hand gestures in communication represent and interpret the world, drawing on microethnographic research and theories of cognition and interaction. In the 2017 volume Self-Making Man: A Day of Action, Life, and Language, Jürgen Streeck analyses how a car mechanic in Texas constructs his social world and identity through gestures, language and actions in communication.
Prof. Dr. Christopher Salter
University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses
University Montreal
Über Christopher Salter
Chris Salter is an artist, University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses, Professor of Computation Arts in the Department of Design and Computation Arts, Co-Director of the Hexagram Network for Research-Creation in Media Art, Design, Digital Culture and Technology, Director of Hexagram Concordia and Associate Director, Milieux Institute for Arts,Culture and Technology.
Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and received his Ph.D. in theater directing and dramatic theory/criticism at Stanford University where he also worked and researched at CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). At Stanford, Salter studied with former Brecht assistant Carl Weber as well as pioneers of digital synthesis John Chowning, Max Matthews and Chris Chafe. In the 1990s, he collaborated with theater director Peter Sellars and choreographer William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballet. He was visiting professor in music, graduate studies and digital media at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) before joining Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2005. He was also Guest Professor at the KhM in Cologne in 2010 and is continuing Guest Faculty at the Masters program in Media Arts History, Institute für Bildwissenschaften,Donau University, Krems, Austria.
Salter’s large scale installations, performative environments and research focuses on and challenges human perception, merging haptic, visual, acoustic and other sensory phenomena. Exploring the borders between the senses, art, design and new technologies, his immersive and physically experiential works are informed by theater, architecture, visual art, computer music, perceptual psychology, cultural theory and engineering and are developed in collaboration with anthropologists, historians, philosophers, engineers,artists and designers.
His work has been shown at major international exhibitions and festivals in over a dozen countries including the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale (Venice), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Berliner Festspiele/Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin), Musée d’Art Contemporain (Montréal),National Art Museum of China (Beijing), Lille 3000 (Lille), Chronus Art Centre (Shanghai), Fondarie Darling (International Biennale of Electronics Arts – Montreal),HAU3 (Berlin), Laboral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industriel (Gijon, Spain),Nuit Blanche (Paris), Vitra Design Museum (Germany), EXIT Festival (Maison des Arts, Creteil-Paris), STRP Biennale (Eindhoven), Ars Electronica (Linz), Pact Zollverein (Essen, Germany), CTM (Berlin), Villette Numerique (Paris),TodaysArt (the Hague), Todays Art.jp (Tokyo), Meta.Morf (Norway), MoisMulti(Quebec), Transmediale (Berlin), Place des Arts (Montréal), Elektra(Montréal),the Banff Center (Banff), Dance Theater Workshop (New York), V2(Rotterdam), SIGGRAPH 2001 (New Orleans), Mediaterra (Athens) and the Exploratorium (SanFrancisco), among others.
Salter is a regular presenter at national and international conferences, has given over 100 invited talks at universities and festivals worldwide and has sat on many juries including the Prix Ars Electronica among others. In addition to his artistic work, he is the author of the seminal book Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press, 2015).
The CRC grants two doctoral scholarships
The CRC awards two short-term scholarships to promote the work of early-career (doctoral) researchers who are conducting research in the field of digital media or preferably in media and cultural studies, sociology or in the field of socio- or business informatics, human-computer interaction or information systems (equivalent to a Master’s degree, Magister, Diplom or Lehramt/Staatsexamen Sek. II) and are interested in a longer-term collaboration with the CRC.
Info
- Begin: 1. October 2026
- Duration: 9-12 months
- The basic amount of the scholarship is based on the maximum rate of the DFG (1.650,- EUR).
- In addition, an allowance for material expenses (103,- EUR) and, if applicable, a child allowance will be paid.
- Please note that the DFG guidelines for doctoral fellowships permit combining the fellowship with additional gainful employment only within narrow limits. The funding may only be supplemented by academic secondary employment up to a maximum of 6.000,- EUR per year. Any income exceeding this amount will be deducted from the fellowship amount.
About the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation“
The CRC is an interdisciplinary collaborative research centre consisting of 19 subprojects and more than 60 researchers from media studies, ethnology, sociology, computer science, linguistics, ubiquitous computing, science and technology studies, education, law and engineering.
The Collaborative Research Centre 1187 has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2016. The research centre studies digital media, which have emerged as cooperative tools, platforms and infrastructures on a broad front, and approaches them as cooperatively accomplished means of cooperation. In the first funding phase (2016-2019), the CRC focused on the relevance of social media and platforms, while the second phase (2020-2023) centered on data-intensive media and data practices. Phase 3 (2024-2027) inquires the interplay between sensor media and artificial intelligence.
The short-term fellowship program of the CRC provides national and international doctoral students the opportunity to further develop their research project in the CRC, to get to know participating researchers and to exchange ideas with them. The research projects of the scholarship holders should be thematically related to the subprojects of the CRC, so that their work can be supported by the principal investigators and their teams. Scholarship holders are assigned to the Integrated Research Training Group (MGK) of the CRC and benefit from its structured training program. The CRC offers scholarship holders an international environment for interdisciplinary media research as well as an extensive program of events and training in ethnographic, digital, sensor-based, linguistic, and AI-based methods.
Further information on the CRC’s research agenda and subprojects can be found at https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en.
Your Profile
- Relevant, above-average degree in one of the disciplines participating in or related to the CRC, preferably in media and cultural studies, sociology or in the field of socio- or business informatics, human-computer interaction or information systems (equivalent to a Master’s degree, Magister, Diplom or Lehramt/Staatsexamen Sek. II)
- Individual research project in one of the above-mentioned disciplines within the subject area of the CRC. Ideally, you can assign the project to one of the subareas of the CRC: infrastructures, publics, or sensory praxeology
- Interest in methods of media research, the analysis of data practices and an affinity for working in an interdisciplinary research environment
- Willingness to participate in the international event program of the CRC and the MGK
- Very good written and spoken English language skills
Your Tasks
Expectations of successful candidates:
- Regular participation and involvement in the events and the training program of the MGK (colloquia, workshops, summer schools, methodology workshops, interdisciplinary groups)
- Presentation of preliminary results of the individual research project within the MGK colloquium
About the application
Please send your application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, copies of certificates, 5-10 page outline of a project idea) as a single PDF file (max 5 mb) to dominik.schrey[ae]uni-siegen.de by 19 June 2026. Please note that risks to confidentiality and unauthorized access by third parties cannot be ruled out when communicating by unencrypted e-mail.
About the University
The University of Siegen is an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan university with currently around 18,000 students and a range of subjects from the humanities, social sciences and economics to natural sciences, engineering and life sciences. With over 2,000 employees, we are one of the largest employers in the region and offer a unique environment for teaching, research and further education.
Equal opportunities and diversity are promoted and actively practiced at the University of Siegen. Applications from women are highly welcome and will be given special consideration in accordance with the federal state equality law. We also welcome applications from people with different personal, social and cultural backgrounds, people with disabilities and those of equal status.
Information about the University of Siegen can be found on our homepage: www.uni-siegen.de.
For further information, please contact
Dr. Dominik Schrey
Phone: +49 (0) 271 740-4664
E-Mail: dominik.schrey[ae]uni-siegen.de
A Critique of Iconic-Humanistic Anthropocentrism
by Kevin Onland (Universität Siegen, SFB)
How can the disrupted relationship between humans and the environment in the Anthropocene be understood epistemologically? In this working paper, Kevin Onland examines the epistemological foundations of human relations with the world in the Anthropocene from the perspective of media philosophy. The paper asks how media, as mediating instances in communication between human and non-human actors, structure approaches to the world, and to what extent anthropocentric patterns of thought are perpetuated in the process.
→ Link Working Paper
About the Working Paper
The starting point is the assumption of disrupted communication between humans and the environment, which stems not only from structural but also from epistemic problems. This paper analyzes how central ideals of an iconic-humanistic anthropocentrism are reflected in media representations of the world.
The focus is on an iconic NASA photograph of Earth: the Blue Marble. As a seemingly holistic view, it reinforces the notion of a detached, quasi-divine observer’s perspective and reproduces objectification, universalization, and the idea of human control as a normative image of “determinations (in) the world.” What becomes visible is a world as a closed object, not as a dynamic, conflict-ridden structure.
The article counters this with a reframing: Media are understood as relational, processual, and situationally embedded actors. Drawing on sympoietic approaches, this brings the co-productive interdependence of humans, non-human entities, and media mediations to the forefront. The result is a media epistemology that does not aim at totality, but rather at partiality, difference, and a mode of thinking in terms of networked world relations.
About the Author
Kevin Onland is a research associate in subproject A03, “Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces”, of the SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation (University of Siegen). His research focuses on art-based media at the intersection with the discourse on the Anthropocene. He earned his bachelor’s degree in film studies and sociology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and his master’s degree in media and social sciences at the University of Siegen.
About the Working Paper Series
The Working Paper Series of SFB 1187 “Media of Cooperation” brings together current contributions from the field of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary media research. The SFB Working Paper Series offers the opportunity for pre-publication and rapid dissemination of research work currently being carried out at the SFB or related to it. The aim of the series is to make SFB research accessible to a broader research community. Publication in the Working Paper Series does not preclude the publication of revised versions of the same contribution in other journals. Contributions from postdocs and established researchers are welcome. The series is intended as a publication forum for the researchers represented in the SFB, their projects, and their ongoing research. Contributions are published in open access and in a limited print edition. If you would like to publish an article in the Working Paper Series, please submit your topic proposal in the form of an abstract (max. 300 words) together with a short CV (max. 50 words). For manuscript submission, please refer to our styleguide.
Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project number 262513311 – SFB 1187. Editorial responsibility: Karina Kirsten, University of Siegen & SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation.
Nation/Culture/Infrastructure: A Grey Room Intervention
Tuesday, April 21st, 10:00 (PT) / 13:00 (ET) / 19:00 (CET) on Zoom
The editors of Grey Room announce an hour-long webinar on infrastructure as a site of political sovereignty and media-technical force, featuring Rosalind C. Morris (Columbia), Erhard Schüttpelz (PI of P02, Siegen), Julia Velkova (Linköping), and Lisa Parks (Santa Barbara), moderated by Bernard Geoghegan (editor, Grey Room).
The conversation will reflect on twenty-first century infrastructural imperialisms, from the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” in light of Marcel Mauss’s 1920s meditations on infrastructure and the nation (published in issue 102 of Grey Room with commentaries by Morris and Schüttpelz). The conversation will also broach emerging questions of methodology and political critique, with particular reference to Schüttpelz’s seminal essay “The Media-Anthropological Turn of Cultural Techniques” (translated in issue 102) and the infrastructural ethnography of Velkova and Parks, “Reimagining Media Historiographies and Satellite Technologies in Bulgaria” (published in issue 103).
For links to the webinar and optional readings, sign up here →
Studying Media as an Ongoing Accomplishment
We are excited to invite you to this summer’s Lecture Series on “Cooperative Methodologies – Studying Sensory Media and AI”. Inspired by Simon Garfinkel’s notion of “ongoing accomplishment”, we invited eight guest speakers to explore research methods and situations methodologically.
About the lecture series
The lecture series “Cooperative Methodologies – Studying Sensory Media and AI” addresses methodological problems that emerge from studying media as an “ongoing accomplishment” (Garfinkel). The central premise is that methods cannot be treated as external instruments applied to pre-given objects. Rather, research situations are constituted through the entanglement of media and tools, technical and human sensing, and research practices. Methodological reflection thus focuses on the conditions under which knowledge is cooperatively produced and problematised.
A key challenge is the multiple situatedness of digital and sensor-based media. Practices are locally embedded yet generate and connect multiple situations through infrastructural distribution, real-time synchronization, and scalability. Micro-situations must therefore be analyzed in relation to infrastructures of sensing and sense-making, data publics and stakeholder constellations, and the interplay of human perception with technical sensor systems. This requires methodological designs that combine approaches capable of tracing cross-scale relations and controversies.
Furthermore, the lecture series is concerned with the methodological status of digital tools and AI systems within research practice. Tools for collecting, sharing, analysing, and visualising data inscribe their own ordering capacities into research. With sensor data and AI outputs, these effects intensify: classifications, recommendations, and model biases shape what can be observed, archived, and interpreted. The series situates these dynamics within debates on performativity, inscriptions, bias, and interface methods, while emphasizing that they emerge in entangled sensory research practices involving human and non-human agencies.
Finally, the lecture series inquires into how methodological choices distribute attention and agency: they determine which experiences count as data, which forms of sensing become legible, and which publics are addressed and which are excluded. Accordingly, the series approaches methods as political arrangements that govern participation in knowledge-making – asking whose voices enter datasets and models, whose interpretations shape analytic pipelines, and whose concerns remain unaccounted for. Cooperative methodology may require making conflicts over categories, metrics, and evidentiary standards explicit, accountable, and revisable.
Lectures & Speakers
We invited eight international guest speakers from media studies, social science, economics, informatics, linguistics, science and technology studies as well as art and activism. They come from the Netherlands, Finland, Iran, USA, Germany and Great Britain.
Lecture Series
“Cooperative Methodologies”
Summer 2026
#1 Ideal Subjects. The Abstract People of AI
Wed, 15.04.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Olga Goriunova
#2 The Ethics of AI-supported Research Methodologies
Wed, 29.04.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Simon Hirsbrunner
#3 Co-Designing Care & Technology: Methodological Insights from Community-Care Research
Wed, 13.05.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Dennis Kirschsieper & Claudia Müller
#4 Situated, Distributed, Messy: Meme Research in Synthetic Social Media
Wed, 27.05.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Elena Pilipets
#5 Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis and the Analysis of Technologized Interaction at Work with Functional Diversity & Mixed Abilities
Wed, 10.06.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Maija Hirvonnen
#6 Counter-Choreographies of Data: Activism Between Platform and Ground
Wed, 10.06.26| 2-3.45 pm
Azadeh Ganjeh
#7 Machineries of Similarity and Difference: AIDS From Its Research Infrastructures
Wed, 10.06.26| 4-5.30 pm
David Ribes
#8 Staying with the Trouble of Personal Data: Data Subject Rights as Method in Conditions of Limited Access
Wed, 08.07.26| 2-4 pm c.t.
Yarden Skop & Maria Boole
Event Details
- Dates: April 15 – July 8, 2026
- Location: University of Siegen, Herrengarten 3, Room: AH-A 217/18
- Streaming: via Webex
- Time: Wednesdays, 2:15 AM – 3:45 PM CET
How to Register
All events take place in hybrid form (on-site and via Webex). No registration is required if you would like to attend on-site. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here →
Contact
Thank you, and we hope to see you there!
Media Climate Justice: At the intersection of media and cultural studies and activism
17.-19. April 2026, Quartiershalle in der Ko Fabrik, Bochum
The MEDIA EXTRACTIVISM Spring School explores, at the intersection of media and cultural studies and activism, how “raw materials” are extracted, used, constructed, imagined, and negotiated in discourse. In doing so, it examines the complex interweaving of materiality, media representation, imagination, and the social attribution of meaning. The goal is to connect academic perspectives with climate policy action, thereby providing new impetus for a critical analysis of media-driven extraction that critically expands the public understanding of sustainability and, in light of the urgency to act, finds ways to address the climate catastrophe.
The Spring School MEDIA EXTRACTIVISM explores, at the intersection of media and cultural studies and activism, how “raw materials” are extracted, used, constructed, imagined, and discursively negotiated. In doing so, it reflects on the complex interweaving of materiality, media representation, imagination, and the societal attribution of meaning.
- What images, narratives, and frames shape public perceptions of raw materials, energy sources, or sustainable alternatives?
- How do journalistic, social, and artistic formats portray the fragility and urgency of resources, as well as their creative power of healing and care?
- Which extractive regimes do algorithmic and cloud-based systems generate or perpetuate?
- How do we narrate the water, land use, and energy conflicts associated with AI and cloud computing?
- Where can we mobilize and practice resistance against extractive violence in our everyday lives?
The Spring School invites scholars, activists, and journalists to explore theoretical and empirical approaches to resources as phenomena of media culture. Within the framework of the Spring School, we aim not only to analyze discourses and representations but also to conceive new performative and participatory communication formats. The goal is to connect scholarly perspectives with climate policy action, thereby providing new impetus for a critical analysis of media-driven extraction that critically expands the public understanding of sustainability and, in light of the urgency to act, finds ways to address the climate catastrophe.
We look forward to lectures and workshops with Migration Audio Archive, Jakob Claus, Gerko Egert, Azadeh Ganjeh, Matthias Grotkopp, Mariette Kesting, Frederike Lange, Petra Löffler, Julia Nitschke, Maike Reinerth, Rémi Willemin, and others.
Studierende, Lehrende und ihre Seminargruppen sind – etwa im Rahmen von Exkursionen – herzlich willkommen, an unserer Media Climate Justice Spring School no. 3 in Bochum teilzunehmen. Infos und Anmeldung unter: mail@mediaclimatejustice.org
History and Theory of Digital Payment
by Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen, SFB)
In his latest publication, Sebastian Gießmann demonstrates how seemingly mundane practices—such as paying at the supermarket or via an app—transform into complex media practices. Digital payment emerges not merely as a technical innovation, but as a political arena in which issues of consumption, control, and the future of cash are being renegotiated.
About the Book
Cash or card? Or perhaps an app or blockchain? Sebastian Gießmann’s fast-paced history of the credit card takes us into the hidden worlds of digital payments. For the first time, it reveals how our digital present in North America began with a small plastic card, what magnetic stripes and chips actually mean, and how Europe could one day become a leader in digital payments. Gießmann elegantly guides readers into the secret inner workings of banks, credit card organizations, and computerized high-tech security. He acknowledges the everyday nature of transactions as well as the absurd “true crimes” of credit card fraud. The Credit Card Book explores the truth behind advertising slogans, company logos, and TV commercials. How we pay is political. Social participation and difference, consumption, financial surveillance, the future of cash: nothing less than our economic identity is at stake in digital payments.
“A brilliant study in media and cultural studies—methodologically groundbreaking and empirically rigorous.” – Anna Echterhölter
Sebastian Giessmann is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen and PI of A01 “Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization” of the Collaborative Research Center 1187 – “Media of Cooperation.”
The Amazon of Drone Warfare
By Hendrik Bender und Max Kanderske (Universität Siegen, SFB)
In their latest working paper (No. 39), Hendrik Bender and Max Kanderske show how the “platformization of drone warfare” is developing in the Russian-Ukrainian war. The focus is on both the FPV drone as a hardware platform and the Delta and Brave1 software platforms, which are used to economize and gamify media practices in battlefield management and military logistics.
About the Working Paper
Both Russia and Ukraine have been using drones on a large scale since the early stages of the war. Initially, this took the form of various types of consumer drone warfare, using commercially available ready-to-fly drones from well-known manufacturers such as DJI or Autel. However, over the last few years, there has been a significant shift towards locally manufactured first-person view (FPV) drones. This development requires – at least on the Ukrainian side – an increasing platformization of military operations.
In this article, we highlight three distinct but intertwined areas of platformization: 1) the modular FPV drone itself, understood as a military platform for sensor and weapon systems; 2) Delta, a software ecosystem for the planning and cooperative execution of drone attacks; 3) and the Brave1 Market, a logistics platform that connects military units with equipment and weapons manufacturers and is also referred to as the “Amazon for drone warfare.”
In doing so, we show that platformized drone warfare is transforming and economizing military organization and procurement processes in terms of gamification and liberal market logic. By datafying and making the operational chain from drone development to battlefield deployment (ac)countable, Delta and Brave1 are intended to ensure quality control and enable self-organization in the face of an increasingly complex network of military technology start-ups and heterogeneous hardware components. The infrastructures created in the course of platformization for drone development and the collection of operational data form the basis for future (semi-)autonomous forms of drone warfare based on machine learning and AI systems.
About the authors
Hendrik Bender is a research assistant in Project B08 “Agentic Media: Formations of Semi-Autonomy” of the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen. His research interests include figurations of cooperation between human actors and synthetic agents, as well as the investigation of spatial and medial practices of flying cameras.
Max Kanderske is a research assistant in project A03 “Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces” of the Siegen SFB “Media of Cooperation.” Beyond navigation, his research interests include sensor-media environments and digital play spaces. He is co-editor of the game studies journal “Spiel|Formen.”
About the Working Paper Series
The Working Paper Series of SFB 1187 “Media of Cooperation” brings together current contributions from the field of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary media research. The SFB Working Paper Series offers the opportunity for pre-publication and rapid dissemination of research work currently being carried out at the SFB or related to it. The aim of the series is to make SFB research accessible to a broader research community. Publication in the Working Paper Series does not preclude the publication of revised versions of the same contribution in other journals. Contributions from postdocs and established researchers are welcome. The series is intended as a publication forum for the researchers represented in the SFB, their projects, and their ongoing research. Contributions are published in open access and in a limited print edition. If you would like to publish an article in the Working Paper Series, please submit your topic proposal in the form of an abstract (max. 300 words) together with a short CV (max. 50 words). For manuscript submission, please refer to our styleguide.
Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project number 262513311 – SFB 1187. Editorial responsibility: Karina Kirsten, University of Siegen & SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation.
„Skill and Scale in Transnational Mediumship: New Communities of Practice and Enskilment“
von Marcello Múscari, Ehler, Voss, Martin, Zillinger
What role do transnational communities and techniques play in knowledge acquisition, and to what extent are such practices communicated, learned, and transformed worldwide? This question is explored in an article by our members Ehler Voss and Martin Zillinger, which they published in collaboration with Marcello Múscari in the Springer Verlag book series.
About this book
„The contributors to this volume analyze how spiritual sociality and shared socio-material worlds are formed across social worlds, that is under conditions of heterogeneity and mediatized interaction.“
The open access volume “Skill and Scale in Transnational Mediumship” presents ethnographic inquiries into new communities of practice and enskilment that revolve around techniques of mediumship, spirit possession, and trance rituals in a globally interconnected world. The increased mobility of people, things, signs, and symbols that shape and reshape trance practices and spiritual experiences has significantly widened their scope and outreach. Circulating body techniques, symbols, and artifacts play a major role in the re-organization of spirituality and contribute to the emergence of transnational “spirited publics”.
About the article by Voss und Zillinger
Mediumship refers to practices that can be found in different cultures around the world and throughout history. Invoking, coming under the influence of, or engaging with disembodied powers can take various forms, which vary according to the local politics of religion, social context, and the personal circumstances of the people involved. In Europe, since the long 19th century mediumship has been archaized as “survivals” and premodern practices. Localized at the “peripheries“ of “modernity” and often ascribed to women, strangers, fools, and children, it has since gained new grounds in the trading zones of globalization. This volume brings together ethnographic research on emerging communities of practice centered on mediumship, spirit possession, and trance rituals in a globally interconnected world. We explore how these practices are taught, learned, reproduced, transmitted, and transformed across various contexts, while reflecting on the concept of “apprenticeship” as a process of enskilment.
Marcello Múscari is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. Ehler Voss is Managing Director of the collaborative research platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC) and Private Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research at the University of Bremen; Chair of the Association for Anthropology and Medicine (AGEM); Editor-in-Chief of the medical anthropology journal Curare; and Co-founder and Co-editor of boasblogs.org. Martin Zillinger holds the Chair for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He is Speaker of the Center for Research on Media and Modernity and of the Interdisciplinary Research Lab “Mediterranean Liminalities”, both at the University of Cologne; and Co-founder and Co-editor of boasblogs.org. He is also active as Principal Investigator for the Project B04 “Digital Publics and Social Transformation in the Maghreb”
The “Beiträge zur Praxeologie / Contributions to Praxeology” aim to place practice above all other explanatory variables and to gain, clarify or correct the basic theoretical concepts from this pre-ordering. Both the works of Wittgenstein and those of Schütz and Garfinkel refer to a common Central European genealogy of “praxeology”, which has, however, remained largely unknown to this day. The series therefore aims to develop in three directions: through philosophical theoretical work, through empirical contributions to theory formation and through contributions to the revision of the history of science.
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