Research supervision

These are projects we are currently conducting in the Cluster and for which we especially welcome research student applications:

Information ecologies: De-individualising our responses to misinformation
This interdisciplinary project focuses on developing better responses to misinformation and disinformation by understanding them as fundamentally social phenomena. This means that both for explaining how these problems emerge and for addressing them a shift in our focus is required from individual agents to our epistemic environments. The project will develop conceptual and practical tools for fostering healthy epistemic environments as a social epistemic responsibility. Candidates with a background in either Philosophy (Social Epistemology), Politics or Communication Studies are welcome to apply – willingness to engage with research across disciplines is an essential requirement. Demonstrated ability for interdisciplinary research is an advantage.

Information ecologies and participatory and deliberative democratic responses
The digital public sphere has unique features that enable creative and experimental modes of participation in deliberation, nationally and globally. Yet disorders and pathologies such as platform concentration, algorithmic censorship and filtering, and a pressing need for information veracity while maintaining a capacity for contestation and critique, present a challenge for the democratic quality of the public sphere. These information ecologies can be both empowering and disordered. What would responses based on participatory and deliberative democracy offer to address these challenges? We invite candidates with a background in political theory, political science, or communication studies to develop a project on responses based on participatory and deliberative democracy. Research can span a range of interests such as fact-checking communities, civil society efforts, or government or business commissioned processes.

The epistemic conditions of corporate ethical responsibility
In order to act on their social and ethical responsibilities, corporate agents – which include for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, but also public institutions such as universities – must be internally constituted in a way that allows them to be effective agents in the first place. This imposes certain requirements on their organisational structure with regard to information flow and distribution. The greater a corporate agent’s complexity the greater is the risk of internal failures in agency, in particular with regard to norms of rationality such as coherence and consistency. There is an emerging literature concerning the role of structural elements in triggering failures of moral agency. The goal of the project is to (1) develop a better understanding of structural epistemic failings of corporate agency, (2) conduct a series of case studies, in order to (3) design practice-relevant guidelines to identify and repair such flaws in corporate structures.