Jan Groos, Dr.

In his transdisciplinary work, Jan Groos combines sociology, political theory and critical digitalisation research with a decisively public and dialogical research practice. His work focuses on the development of desirable of democratic futures. Through his work on democratic planning, as well as his public research in the context of the Future Histories podcast, he has become an internationally recognised voice on issues of democratic transformation and alternative futures.

Research

Jan Groos heads the research focus Democratic Change and Knowledge at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). His work examines how forms of collective self-determination can be rethought and redesigned in digital societies. To him, engaging with broad publics not only provides an opportunity to share research findings, but it also facilitates dialogical forms of exchange in an effort to democratise knowledge production itself. Understood in this way, public research is also a response to the loss of trust in scientific knowledge, which is one of the subjects of the research focus led by Jan.

Academic career

He completed his doctorate in Sociology on Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Algorithmic Government at the Department of Sociological Theory at Kiel University. Jan graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with a diploma and has held research fellowships at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin and the Remarque Institute at New York University. He is also an affiliated researcher at the digital_culture research focus at Fernuniversität Hagen and the Critical Data Lab at the University of Oldenburg. He founded the Future Histories LAB and is co-editor of the Bristol University Press anthology Creative Construction: Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond (2025).