Short Vita
Hansjörg Graul is a research associate and doctoral candidate in the DFG-funded research training group Fixing Futures: investigating technologies of anticipation in contemporary societies. Before joining the RTG, he was employed as a researcher at the ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research in Frankfurt. He received his MA in 2020 and studied Sociology and History at Goethe University Frankfurt and Paris- Sorbonne University. His research interests include environmental sociology, science and technology studies (STS), and critical social theory.
Project Description
Hansjörg Graul’s research project engages with socio-material practices of cultivating macroalgae in aquacultures for carbon sequestration and their embeddedness in contemporary practices of future-making and technologies of anticipation. At the center of his Ph.D. research is algae’s capacity for carbon sequestration – the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide – and the envisioned possibilities of climate change mitigation. The ocean-based negative emission technology of macroalgal carbon sequestration can thus be viewed as a techno- scientific attempt to fix futures in the face of socio-ecological crises. These envisioned possibilities are currently characterized by high levels of uncertainty. To explore the ways in which technologies of anticipation respond to these uncertainties, his investigation will be based on ethnographic field research in algal aquacultures and expert interviews with various stakeholders involved.