Patrizia Nanz

Patrizia Nanz (born 9 July 1965 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a political scientist and an expert for public participation and democratic innovations. She is a professor of transformative sustainability studies at the University of Potsdam, and one of three scientific directors at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). She is the co-chair of "Science Platform Sustainability 2030", an interdisciplinary platform for research and dialogue to support the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Germany. She has held a professorship for political theory at the University of Bremen since 2002. Patrizia Nanz was the head of the research area "Culture of Participation" at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen from 2013 to 2016. She is a founder of the European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP) and has been a member of the executive committee of the Participedia wiki, a database for democratic innovations worldwide, since 2009. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the World Forum for Democracy hosted annually by the Council of Europe. Nanz has provided expert opinions to businesses, state agencies and governments in various European countries.

Her main areas of research are public participation and technology assessment (climate change, biotechnology, energy transition, final storage of nuclear waste), democratic theory, transnational governance and the political project of Europe).

Education and early career

A recipient of a scholarship awarded to gifted individuals by the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts, Patrizia Nanz studied philosophy at Munich School of Philosophy and history and literary criticism as well as philosophy at universities in Munich, Milan and Frankfurt Rhine-Main between 1984 and 1990. During this time she also trained as a journalist at the IfP Catholic Media School in Munich and undertook internships with various newspapers (including an internship with the Arts & Culture section of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung). Her thesis on the philosophy of language was supervised by Jürgen Habermas.

From 1991 Nanz worked for several years as an editor on science and non-fiction publications for German publishing house S. Fischer Verlag and Milan-based publishers Feltrinelli. Following a sabbatical at McGill University, where she attended lectures by Charles Taylor, Nanz commenced her doctoral studies in political science at the European University Institute in Florence] in 1997. She completed her doctoral degree with a thesis, published in 2006, on the European public sphere (examiners: Philippe C. Schmitter, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Sabel, Peter Wagner).

Prior to her appointment to the University of Bremen in 2002, Nanz was a research associate with the Max Planck Institute for Research on Common Goods in Bonn. She has undertaken fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, University of Westminster (London), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge).

Research

From 2002 to 2010 Nanz was the coordinator and executive leader of the research project “Participation and Legitimation of International Organisations” at the Collaborative Research Center Staatlichkeit im Wandel (Transformations of the State) at the University of Bremen (from 2006 together with Jens Steffek). Between 2005 and 2009, Nanz led the German research effort for the project “Giving New Subjects a Voice: Migrants, Organizations and Integration into the Health Care System”. Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the project sought to develop innovative approaches that would make the policy process and institutional settings of the health-care system more responsive to the needs of migrants. Nanz was the executive leader of the research project Fundamental Rights in the European Union from 2007 to 2010. The project was funded by the European Union and conducted within the framework of the European research network Resources, Rights and Capabilities: In Search of Social Foundations for Europe (CAPRIGHT).

In 2009 Patrizia Nanz co-founded the participedia wiki^[6] – a global database for democratic innovations. She is a member of the platform’s executive committee. From 2011 to 2013 Nanz contributed to the research project “Participedia: Strengthening an emerging global partnership”, which was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Together with Klaus Töpfer (IASS) and Claus Leggewie (KWI), she was the co-leader of the research project DEMOENERGY (Transformation of the Energy System as the Engine for Democratic Innovations), which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project studied the development, implementation, and evaluation of dialogue-based processes for citizen participation as solutions for conflict resolution and de-escalation in connection with energy infrastructure projects.

Publications (selection)

Monographies

• Die Konsultative. Mehr Demokratie durch Bürgerbeteiligung, Klaus Wagenbach Verlag, 2016, (with Claus Leggewie)
• Handbuch Bürgerbeteiligung - Verfahren und Akteure, Chancen und Grenzen, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2012/2015 (with Miriam Fritsche). Italian Version: La partecipazione dei cittadini: un manuale. Metodi partecipativi: protagonisti, opportunita’ e limiti, Regione Emilia Romagna 2014.
• Europolis. Constitutional Patriotism beyond the Nation State, Manchester University Press, 2006; Italian Version: Europolis. Un idea controcorrente di integrazione politica, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2009. With a foreword by Charles Taylor.
• Wahrheit und Politik in der Mediengesellschaft: Anmerkungen zu Hannah Arendt, Klaus Wagenbach Verlag, 2006/2013.

Edited volumes

• Is Europe listening to us? Successes and Failures of EU Citizen Consultations (edited with Raphael Kies), Ashgate Publishing, 2013. French Version: Les nouvelles voix de l’Europe? Analyses des consultations citoyennes, Editions Larcier/De Boeck, forthcoming, 2013. With a foreword by EU-Commissioner Viviane Reding
• Civil Society Participation in International Governance: A Cure for Its Democratic Deficit? (edited with Jens Steffek and Claudia Kissling), Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Journal articles and book chapters

• “Participation”, in: Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (Ed. by Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd and Ian Johnstone), Oxford University Press, 2015 (with Klaus Dingwerth)
• "The future council. New forms of democratic participation", in: Eurozine, 2013 (with Claus Leggewie).
• "Lo sviluppo della cittadinanza comunitaria e la corte della giustizia europea", in Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica, special issue 1, 2013.
• "Free Movement and the Emergence of European Social Citizenship", in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 4/2012 (with Dawid Friedrich and Kerstin Blome).
• "Global governance, participation, and the public sphere", in: David Held, Mathias König-Archibugi (Ed.), Global Governance and Public Accountability, Government and Opposition, 2004, pp. 314–335 (with Jens Steffek).

External links

• Homepage Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI)
• Homepage European Institute for Public Participation
• Homepage Participedia
• Interview with the Heinrich Böll Foundation about public participation (German)