Thomas Völker
- E-mailthomas.volker@uib.no
- Phone+47 55 58 27 07
- Visitor AddressParkveien 95007 Bergen
- Postal AddressPostboks 78055020 Bergen
Thomas Völker is a MSCA SEAS postdoctoral research fellow in STS research on national and international/global nexus issues related to aquaculture, including the issue of novel feeds and the development and implementation of circular economy policies, as well as the introduction of RRI (responsible research and innovation) and participatory and transdisciplinary dimensions into aquaculture R&I.
From 2020-2022, Völker was one of University of Bergen's representatives in the secretariat for the UNESCO Global Independent Expert Group on Universities and the 2030 Agenda (EGU2030).
Initially trained as a sociologist, in his PhD thesis Völker studied “futuring” practices in transdisciplinary sustainability research from a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective. After finishing his PhD at the University of Vienna, he joined the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), where he further developed his research interests towards questions about participatory decision-making at the multiple interfaces between science, policy and society. Völker has been working both in academia and policy with his research focusing on practices of knowledge production and circulation in environmental governance as well as on collective experiments with participatory democracy in policy making.
Thomas Völker has been teaching at University-level and for European Commission institutions.
At the University of Vienna he developed and held the following courses:
- Kulturen der Wissenserzeugung: Von der Wertegemeinschaft zum Marktplatz der Ideen?
- Tempor(e)alitäten: Zur Rolle von Zukunft und Zeitlichkeiten in kontemporären Wissensgesellschaften
- Dangerous Liaisons? Tracing Society in Contemporary Knowledge Production
- 'Who cares what the future brings?' Understanding technoscientific futures
At the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) he developed and held a course on citizen engagement together with Ângela Guimarães Pereira:
- DG JRC Training on Citizen Engagement in Policyrelevant Science, Technology and Innovation
- (2023). The politics of measurement and the case of energy efficiency policy in the European Union. Energy Research & Social Science.
- (2023). Post-normal science in practice: Reflections from scientific experts working on the European agri-food policy nexus. Environmental Science and Policy. 158-167.
- (2021). “What Was That Word? It’s Part of Ensuring Its Future Existence” Exploring Engagement Collectives at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. Science, Technology and Human Values.
- (2020). Datafictions: Or how measurements and predictive analytics rule imagined future worlds. JCOM - Journal of Science Communication.
- (2019). The role of metrics in the governance of the water-energy-food nexus within the European Commission. Journal of Rural Studies.
- (2019). Indicator development as a site of collective imagination? The case of European Commission policies on the circular economy. Culture and Organization.
- (2018). Indicator development as a site of collective imagination? The case of European Commission policies on the circular economy. Culture and Organization.
- (2020). The Nexus Times. Megaloceros forlag.
- (2019). The Circular Economy in Europe Critical Perspectives on Policies and Imaginaries.
More information in national current research information system (CRIStin)
See an overview of Thomas Völker's publications at his ORCID profile.
2020-2022 Territories as Responsive and Accountable Networks of S3 through new Forms of Open and Responsible decision-Making (TRANSFORM), Horizon 2020 - SwafS-2019
2020-21 UNESCO Global Independent Expert Group on the Universities and the 2030 Agenda
2016-20 Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security (MAGIC) , H2020-WATER
