Patrizia Nanz


Patrizia Nanz 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.
On 1 March 2018 she was elected managing scientific director. Since 2020, she has been Co-Director of the Deutsch-Französisches-Zukunftswerk, the foundation of which was decided by the Aachen Treaty that was adopted on 22 January 2020. 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 in Essen from 2013 to 2016. She is a founder of the European Institute for Public Participation 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.

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. 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.
In 2002, after working as a research associate with the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, and completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster researching on the subject of “Democracy, Deliberation and Learning at the Transnational Level: Risk Regulation in the European Union and the World Trade Organisation”, Nanz was appointed to a professorship at the University of Bremen with a focus on political theory. She was a guest researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 and a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin Institute for Advanced Study in 2005–06.

Research and other activities

Patrizia Nanz’s main areas of research are the European political project, the democratic innovation and development, public participation, and technology assessment.
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 at the University of Bremen. 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.
In 2009 Patrizia Nanz co-founded the participedia wiki – 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 and Claus Leggewie, she was the co-leader of the research project DEMOENERGY, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 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.
Patrizia Nanz is a member of the boards of trustees of the Hannah Arendt Festival, which is staged annually in Hanover. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the World Forum for Democracy. In addition she is member of the specified advisory board Cultural Education and Discourse of the German Goethe Institute, advisory board of Die Umwelt-Akademie, Munich, as well as corresponding member of advisory board of the European Forum Alpbach. Nanz has provided expert opinions to businesses, governments and government agencies in various European countries.

Coal phase-out in Germany

As part of an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany, Patrizia Nanz is also involved in a project concerning the phase-out of coal in the German region Lusatia. In their project "Social Transformation and Policy Advice in Lusatia", Nanz and the IASS analyse the supra-regional opportunities for democratically designed and socially just structural change in Lusatia and, in this context, develop proposals for structuring regional cooperation processes. The interdisciplinary research group is concerned with the fields of conflicts and opportunities of democratic and sustainable structural change, taking into account the historical and political circumstances as well as the inclusion of the people in the region. The findings of the project are available to political and social actors and are incorporated into the work of the "Zukunftswerkstatt Lausitz", which is accompanied by the IASS research group.

Science Platform Sustainability 2030

Patrizia Nanz is the co-chair of “Science Platform Sustainability 2030”, an interdisciplinary platform for research and dialogue to support the implementation of the German Sustainable Development Strategy within the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Development and its 17 sustainable development goals. The platform supports policymaking for sustainable development by generating, collating, and strategically disseminating knowledge. It provides a scientific perspective on both the progress towards and obstacles to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in, with, and through Germany. Working closely with stakeholders from civil society, business and policymaking, the platform identifies relevant research deficits and fosters dialogue in order to facilitate a broad exchange of ideas among representatives from academia, policymaking, the private sector, and civil society. The platform, which operates independently, applies a transdisciplinary approach in its work and is a key part of the new architecture supporting the implementation of the German Sustainable Development Strategy.

Participation

Along with Claus Leggewie and other social scientists, Patrizia Nanz is a proponent of democratic innovation based on the participation of a randomly selected sample of citizens, who are invited to develop and identify possible solutions to future challenges. These bodies are of a consultative/advisory nature and the adoption of their findings requires the approval of a democratically elected local council or parliament at the state or national level.
This approach to public participation is similar to the planning cell method developed by Peter Dienel.
In 2020 the book "" was published, in which Patrizia Nanz, together with Charles Taylor and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor, uses local examples to describe how democracies in transformations can be revitalized by involving citizenship.
Patrizia Nanz has also argued that the contemporary crisis of democracy cannot be overcome merely by adopting elements of public participation as a complement to representative democracy. Instead, she believes, priority must be given to efforts to strengthen the credibility of democracy as a form of governance; for instance, by enabling citizens and policymakers to develop and assume responsibility for goals that can only be achieved over the longer term. According to Nanz, the future of the open society depends upon a vigorous defence of democratic rights and values as well as a broad public sphere, civic values, and solidarity.

Publications (selection)

Monographies