Since April 2018, Ann-Kathrin Benner has been working at the IFSH as a researcher as part of the DFG project "The Knowledge Politics of (In-)Security in the Anthropocene". She was previously an event co-ordinator for the Berlin Office of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Ann-Kathrin Benner studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Université de Provence, and the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. As part of her master's thesis, she conducted a DAAD-funded ethnographic field study on the everyday practices of EU-Russia experts in Riga.

In her work, Ann-Kathrin Benner analyses the conditions under which the thesis that we live in the age of the Anthropocene gained popularity among Earth system scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain. She is also concerned with how practices that help anticipate possible futures (e.g. scenario exercises and computer modelling) are structured. She is currently preparing an empirical case study in which she will examine the assumption of an increasing convergence of knowledge practices and security policy using the example of proposals for manipulating the Earth system through geoengineering.

Publications