Situating the Researcher

This article is part of my Master’s Thesis - Future Imaginaries. Previous Chapter: 1.4 Critical Futures Studies

Following Donna Haraway’s ‘Situated Knowledge. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives.’¹, in which she describes knowledge production as political, embodied, particular, and local; what follows here is a subjective description of some biographical data and self-assessments of the author’s perspective to situate the point of view of this thesis.

The author was born in Germany to a working-class family of German nationality. At the time of submitting this work (January 2020), he is 41 years old. In 2006 he graduated in Media System Design from the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt. The study program combined the fundamentals of design, computer science, and marketing to teach the approaches of all three disciplines. This interdisciplinarity runs like a thread through the author’s interest and work. Following his studies, he worked for a large digital marketing agency, where he built up the social media department. Since 2010, he has been one of the managing partners of Third Wave, based in Berlin. In this role, the author has advised many clients in Germany from numerous industries with different company sizes—especially on digital transformation topics.

In recent years, more and more topics and projects in trend research and foresight have been added. Finally, in 2017, the author decided to study futures studies at FU Berlin in addition to his work as a managing director to supplement the practical experience gained from working with clients with a theoretical, scientific foundation in the field of futures studies. The master’s degree was completed with this master’s thesis.

The author’s approach is informed by many years of trend research (in business, not academia). During this time, he has continuously examined numerous areas (disciplines, industries, topics) for patterns to identify new trends and developments, predominantly at the intersection of technology and society. This approach - coupled with an inter-and transdisciplinary way of thinking - is characteristic for this master thesis, which covers a broad range from futures studies to various fields of sociology and anthropology. During his master’s studies, the author focused on the field of critical futures studies.

The author has no previous experience with social science work outside of the master’s program.