Chair for Sociology of Technology

Peter Kahlert


PhD Researcher

Contact details

kahlert[at]europa-uni.de

Office: CP 118
Office hours: By appointment (send me an Email)

Research Areas

  • Pragmatism and Social Theory
  • Hackathons and Social Innovation
  • Creativity and Problem-Solving
  • Innovative and Digital Methods
  • Digital Media

Curriculum Vitae


Peter Kahlert (M.A.) is a researcher at the ENS’s STS research group, which belongs to Jan Passoth’s chair for sociology of technology at Viadrina. He is currently investigating the impact of hackathons as a means of introducing social innovation in higher education, within a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Part of that research is teaching a class in methods and scopes of social innovation and organizing a hackathon together with his students. His PhD thesis discusses creativity and creative problem solving by the example of hackathons and how this young career of creativity as a term has peculiarly made it into virtually all realms of our (post)modern lives.
Peter Kahlert has studied sociology, political science, and philosophy at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. Since then. he has worked as a researcher at TU Munich’s Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) and ENS, where he was involved with projects concerning creativity at hackathons, decision support systems in industry, comprehensibility of health claims, artificial intelligence, and content curation of large online platforms. His work is grounded in pragmatist philosophy and focused on qualitative, digital and mixed method research methodology.