PROJECTS
The Project
Far beyond its status as a technological endeavour, Energy Transition has become one of the most ambitious and embattled projects of our present-day societies, projecting and preparing a variety of possible energy futures. In fact, by crossing nations, minds and disciplines, the quest for energy security has turned this project into a new master narrative. The narrative of Energy Transition – like its hardware counterpart in engineering, informatics and technology – is driven by a set of technological, conceptual and qualitative models meant to meet societal needs and demands.
Aesthetic strategies are poised to play a major role in the design, representation and evaluation of a model, and they guide the ways in which it is communicated, thus accounting for the model’s failure or success. They are a vital means to mitigate the differences in geography, political conditions, cultures and traditions prevalent within the global energy community, especially as they necessitate a set of narratives that experts, citizens, and stakeholders create together.
Aesthetic Modelling distinguishes itself from other types of modelling by the forms and functions it delivers: tools of representing and communicating, narratives of failure or success, modalities of being, rules of validation and evaluation, concepts of coherence and integrity, conditions of acceptance. With regard to Energy Transition, this approach to model criticism shows how features of aesthetic modelling relate to and accommodate the tensions between techno-computational and techno-social forms of modelling and so releases their discursive power.
As places of collaboration, crossing boundaries between scientific expertise and public discourse, real-world labs provide an ideal testing ground both for the roles and features of aesthetic modelling and its applied poetics. In particular, the Energy Transition labs are places of joint modelling wherein aesthetic modelling is a decisive part of social modelling. It contributes a joint experience and means of fabrication to the contact zone of science and aesthetics, carried out by actors from a wide range of societal, professional and epistemic domains. Aesthetic modelling can build the bridge between the modelling of Energy Transition and its real-world lab environment. As such, it also serves a double academic purpose: to enhance and broaden the emerging field of real-world laboratory studies, and, in doing so, to close a major gap in model theory.
Researchers
- Prof. Dr. Veit Hagenmeyer, Energy Informatics, KIT Karlsruhe (PI)
- Prof. Dr. Klaus Stierstorfer, English Studies, University of Münster (PI)
- Prof. Dr. Robert Matthias Erdbeer, German Studies, University of Münster (Research Coordinator)
- Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald, Technology Assessment, KIT Karlsruhe / ITAS
- Prof. Dr. Daniel J. Lang, Real-World Laboratory Research, KIT Karlsruhe / ITAS
- Dr. Paulina Dobroć, Technology Assessment, KIT Karlsruhe / ITAS
- Prof. Tobias Becker, Design and Design Theory / Fine Arts, University of Siegen (ass. Partner)
Energy Futures on Campus in the Middle East: Teaching. Modelling. Realisation.
A DeveloPPP 'Partners in Transformation' Project
This project is a research collaboration of the University of Münster, the Imam Ja’afar al-Sadiq University of Baghdad, Iraq, and the Applied Science Private University of Amman, Jordan. It addresses the urgent need for a sustainable, resilient energy future in Jordan and Iraq. While Jordan requires support to scale up its renewable infrastructure and research capacity, Iraq needs foundational investment in infrastructure, planning, and capacity building. The asymmetry between the two countries is not just a challenge—it is a call to action. By fostering collaboration between advanced and emerging energy systems, the project aims to catalyse transformative change where it is most needed and most overdue.
The core initiative for the project originates within a long collaboration between KIT and the University of Münster exploring innovative approaches to modelling in general and energy transition in particular. The uniqueness of the approach here is the integration of modelling aesthetics and communicative aspects within models, which are themselves seen as processes rather than static constructs. This project line has been funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (2019-2023) and, currently, by the DFG (2025-2030; https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/550232575). With the develoPPP project, modelling expertise gained for Germany can now be tested, adjusted and applied in very different contexts (Iraq and Jordan), which are promising locations precisely because of their differences to the German situation and the perceived context-contingency of models.
Researchers
- Prof. Dr. Klaus Stierstorfer, Universität Münster
- Prof. Mohammad Ahmad Hamdan, ASU, Amman
- Ass. Prof. Dr. Azeez Jasim, IJSU, Baghdad