Dr. Michelle Christensen

Michelle Christensen is a sociologist and designer, exploring the spaces in between these realms. Her research interests include trans- and postdisciplinarity, the politics of design and the democratic potentials of free and open technologies.

Michelle wrote her Ph.D. in the field of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts. Prior to this, she studied political sociology at Roskilde University in Denmark (B.A.), conflict studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (M.A.), gender studies at the University of Amsterdam (M.Sc.), and integrated design at the Köln International School of Design in Cologne (M.A.). She has worked at the Crisis Department of Amnesty International USA, was a Humanity in Action Fellow, and a Congressional Fellow in the United States Congress in Washington DC. As a researcher, she has worked at the Design Research Lab (UdK Berlin), the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and from 2018-2022 she lead the research group Critical Maker Culture at the UdK Berlin / Weizenbaum Institute together with Florian Conradi. She has taught courses in conflict analysis, gender studies and design methods at universities in the Netherlands and Germany, most recently as a visiting professor at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau.

Currently she co-heads the research group Design, Diversity and New Commons at the UdK Berlin in the framework Weizenbaum Institute, and since 2019 she teaches as a visiting professor for Open Science & Critical Culture at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital Future. Her research, teaching and experimental design practice focuses on feminist/queer, decolonial and postanthropocentric approaches to design. From 2014-2024 she was a board member of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF) and since 2015 she is a member of the Board of International Research in Design (BIRD) at Birkhäuser. Since 2024 she is a Principal Investigator in the Object Space Agency project at the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity (Humboldt University of Berlin) and in 2023 she joined the board of directors of the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) in Berlin.