Kathrin Maurer (PhD; Dr. phil.) is Professor of Culture and Technology at the University of Southern Denmark (Odense, DK). Before moving to Denmark, she studied and worked in the United States for many years (Columbia University, University of Arizona). With an academic background in German literature, her recent research interests have increasingly focused on the study of technology in visual art, literature, and culture.
She has served as principal investigator of research projects on drone surveillance, visual culture, and AI and creativity (funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and the Velux Foundation), and she founded the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Southern Denmark. She is the author of the monograph The Sensorium of the Drone and Communities (MIT Press, 2023) and has edited a number of anthologies and special journal issues on cultural imaginaries of drones, war imagery, and aesthetics and machine vision.
In the current project “In a Divided Time: Polarization in Denmark and the Nordic Region,” she examines how aesthetic domains can generate new knowledge about constructive and destructive dynamics of polarization. She analyzes visual art that engages with polarization and extremism, focusing on Nordic contemporary art while also incorporating international activist art.
In her analysis of artistic works, she raises questions such as: How can art foster a democratic public sphere? Which aesthetic techniques are employed, and what role do new technologies (e.g., machine learning and digitalization) play in these works?
