Learning & Teaching

I studied political science in Berlin, Denmark and London. My academic work so far has focused on the theory and practice of social movements and international social-ecological justice.

For about six years I have been teaching regularly at universities and self-organized working groups. Mostly at art universities, but also at faculties of education, political science, communication science and journalism.

Learning

The Otto Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin was my starting point for political science. I wrote my first master thesis in 2010 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. It was entitled “No Gods, no Masters – A post-foundational perspective on participation in development” and included a more theoretical approach onto the role of social movements in global development policy. At the time I was quite proud of my idea of “strategic dislocation” in political discourses, paradoxical as it may be. This basic idea still runs through my work today.

The second Master in 2012 was a little more practical and dealt with the question why knowledge and action are so far apart in the climate crisis. The text itself is quite a brainfuck, but I remember closely following the Rio+20 climate conference while writing the paper and trying to weave the actual climate discourse into regulatory theories and science studies. I wrote the paper at the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance in Berlin, and it is still frighteningly relevant today.

So, I now have an MSc in Development & Globalisation and an MA in Public Policy. On request I can send you the papers.

Speaking and Teaching

I regularly give lectures, read my own texts, give workshops or seminars at universities, conferences, theatres and NGOs. Depending on the context, this can be theoretical or literary. In the case of an existing working group, however, it can also be very concrete, right up to project management and the realization of a new action.

Mostly it is about the question, how we can overcome powerlessness and lethargy, although fascists celebrate successes worldwide and the climate change seems to be unstoppable. I talk about which subversive tactics and forms of action I know or from current projects I am working on. I talk about social movements, funny media tactics, undercover operations, interventionist art forms and the latest Peng campaigns.

In concrete consultations and project support we go step by step from ethical positioning to secure communication and legal assessments through all aspects of a creative political intervention – be it against the border protection agency Frontex, harassment of parcel carriers or for the strengthening of ecological agriculture.

The subjects I teach seminars at are mostly media art, theatre or design classes at the art faculties, but also communication, education or political science. The UdK in Berlin, the Angewandte in Vienna, the University of Cologne, the FU-Berlin or the University of Kiel are some of the addresses I like to work with.

Outside the universities I am invited by theatres like the Gorki-Theater and the HAU in Berlin or the Schauspiel Dortmund, by Greenpeace, Oxfam or by conferences for investigative journalism like the Logan-Symposium and conferences like the