Teilprojekt WS »Wissenschaftliches Serviceprojekt: Methoden und Didaktik«
Raum GB 8|34
Mail katia.schwerzmann@rub.de
Adresse Universitätsstraße 150 | 44801 Bochum | Deutschland

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Vita

• seit 08|2026: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Teilprojekt WS „Wissenschaftliches Serviceprojekt. Methoden und Didaktik“ des SFB 1567 „Virtuelle Lebenswelten“
• 10.2025 – 07.2026: Vertretungsprofessur, Institute of Media Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• seit 05|2025: Assoziierte, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen | SFB Virtual Lifeworld, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• 11.2025 – 04.2025: Thyssen@KWI Fellow, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen
• 11.2022 – 10.2024: Postdoc, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Research Project Interact! New Forms of Social Interaction with Intelligent Systems
• 05.2020 – 09.2022: Postdoc, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Graduate School Media Anthropology (GRAMA)
• 07.2019– 04.2020: Postdoc Visiting Scholar, Duke University, NC, USA, Program in Literature with Prof. Mark B. Hansen and Prof. Luciana Parisi
• 04.2019– 06.2019: Postdoc Research Associate, UC Santa Cruz, CA, USA, Feminist Studies Department & History of Consciousness Department with Prof. Karen Barad
• 10.2017– 03.2019: Postdoc Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA, Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory with Prof. Liliane Weissberg. MIRA Research Group (Department of Philosophy) with Prof. Lisa Miracchi
• 05.2016 – 03.2017: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Philosophy, Prof. Sybille Krämer
• 12.2016: Joint PhD, Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin and Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. Dissertation Title: Theorie des graphischen Feldes. Summa cum laude

Forschungsschwerpunkte

• Maschinelles Lernen und statistische Modellierung
• Genealogie algorithmischer Rationalitäten
• Normative Rationalität generativer KI
• Maschinelle Übersetzung
• Hauntologie und Enteignung
• Technologische Grundlagen von Grundbegriffen der politischen Theorie
• Technologien der Grenze und Rassifizierung

Publikationen

Monografien

Monografien in Vorbereitung:

• Toward a Hauntology of Touch.

Monografien:

• Theorie des graphischen Feldes. Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2020

Aufsätze

Peer-Reviewed Aufsätze

• “You’re Absolutely Right”: Sycophancy, Personas and the Problem of Human-Model Relations.”Co-written with Alexander Campolo (in Vorbereitung).

• “From Enclosure to Foreclosure and Beyond: Opening AI’s Totalizing Logic,” AI &Society 41 (April 2026): 6659–70, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-03024-7.
• “‘Desired Behaviors’: Alignment and the Emergence of a Machine Learning Ethics.” Co-written with Alexander Campolo. AI & Society, 2025, 1–14.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02272-3.
• “From Rules to Examples. Machine Learning’s Type of Authority.” Co-written with Alexander Campolo. Big Data & Society 10, no. 2(2023): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231188725.
• “‘One Unique You’: Affective Attachments and DNA-Testing as Ethnotechnological Apparatus.” Co-written with Deanna Cachoian-Schanz. Social Text 41, no. 1 (2023): 71–97. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-10174982.
• “Abolish! Against the Use of Risk Assessment Algorithms at Sentencing in the US Criminal Justice System.” Philosophy & Technology 34, no. 4 (2021): 1883–1904. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-021-00491-2.
• “Moralisation de la vie nue—transhumanisme et biopolitique.” Revue des Sciences Humaines 341 (2021): 227–43. https://doi.org/10.4000/rsh.432.
• Nothing Happening Here (Kelsey Brod, Katia Schwerzmann, Jordan Sjol, Alexander Strecker, and Kristen Tapson). 2021. “Nothing Re-fused: Performing the Neo-Institution.” APRJA 10 (1): 85–93. URL:https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v10i1.128189.
• “‘La Lettre Morte’—Friedrich Kittler en correspondance avec les poststructuralistes.” Appareil 19 (2017): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.4000/appareil.2552.
• “‘Une sorte de remontée vers le corps’. Skizze einer Ästhetik der körperlichen Responsivität. ”Kodikas/Code. Ars Semeiotica 37, no. 3/4 (2014): 249–60.

Aufsätze in Sammelbändern

• “Affection Without Affectability: On the Therapeutics of LLMs,” in The Answering Machine: Human-AI Entanglements in the Era of Conversational Agents, ed. Maximilian Zhang and Susanne Marschall (Transcript, 2026, upcoming).
• “Large Language Models, Machine Writing, and the Human as Supplement,” in BrAIve New Worlds?! Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – Concepts, Genres, and Model Interpretations, ed. Angela Gencarelli et al. (Routledge, 2026, in press).
• “Die Normative Logik der Anpassung in Large Language Models. Wissen, Subjektivität, Sozialität,” in Customizing: Konfigurationen medialer Anpassung, ed. Beate Ochsner and Markus Rautzenberg, Internationales Jahrbuch für Medienphilosophie und Medienästhetik 2025 (meson press, 2026).
• “Large Language Models,” in Virtuelle Universität, ed. Breil Patrizia and Sprenger Florian (Transcript, 2026).
• “Ruled by the Representation Space: On the University’s Embrace of Large Language Models.” May 6, 2025. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.03513.
• “Einführung: Relationieren—Eine Kritische Operation.” In Szenen Kritischer Relationalität. Co-written with Charlotte Bolwin, Jasmin Degeling, Martin Kallmeyer, Gereon Rahnfeld, and Nathalie Schäfer. 7–21. Lüneburg: meson press, 2024.
• “Begegnung (Donna J. Haraway).” In Berühren Lesen, edited by Hanna Sohns and Johannes Ungelenk, 28–33. München: August Verlag, 2021.
• “Wirken und Wissen im Wechselspiel: Das Verhältnis zwischen Schema und Bild.” In Nach der ikonischen Wende. Aktualität und Geschichte eines Paradigmas, edited by Jonas Etten and Julian Jochmaring, 91–105. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2021.
• “‘Coupling Parts That Are Not Supposed to Touch’ oder die Berührung als Kritik.” In Tangieren. Szenen des Berührens, edited by Sandra Fluhrer and Alexander Waszynski, 283–99. Baden-Baden: Rombach, 2020.
• “Introduction au Dossier Critique ‘Théorie des média.’” Acta Fabula 19, no. 8 (October 2018). https://10.58282/acta.11596.
• “L’ haptique et la question du fond. Réflexion autour du sens du fond dans les pratiques graphiques indiciaires à partir de Riegl et Maldiney.” In Xi Dong/Ouest-Est. Voies esthétiques, edited by François Félix, 50–75. Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 2015.
• “Dimensionen des Graphismus. Die drei Pole der Linie.” In Über Kritzeln. Graphismen zwischen Schrift, Bild, Text und Zeichen, edited by Christian Driesen, Rea Köppel, Benjamin Meyer-Kramer, and Eike Wittrock, 39–57.Berlin, Zürich: Diaphanes, 2012.

Herausgaben

• Szenen Kritischer Relationalität. Co-edited with Charlotte Bolwin, Jasmin Degeling, Martin Kallmeyer, Gereon Rahnfeld, Nathalie Schäfer. Lüneburg: meson press, 2024. https://meson.press/books/szenen-kritischer-relationalitaet/.

Vorträge

• 21.05.2026: Der Souverän und sein Nachbar – Ein Dialog. Talk | Workshop Digitale Souveränität im Widerstreit, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (21-22.05.2026). Invited by Dr. Johannes Bennke and Prof. Claus Pias.
• 28.02.2026: Toward Universal Translatability: On the Statistical Ontology of Generative AI. Talk | Panel: Alphabet & AI (27.02-01.03.2026). American Comparative Literature Association, Montreal Canada.
• 27.01.2026: Affection Without Affectability: On the Therapeutics of LLMs. Lecture | Medien Denken, Institute for Media Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
• 08.01.2026: From the Affection Without Affectability of Large Language Models to the Tangible Community. Keynote| PRE_INVENT Chapter XI: On Knowledge or Beyond (Un)Tangleability | HSD PBSA Düsseldorf (07.-09.01.2026), Invited by Prof. Mareike Foecking.
• 26.09.2025: Generative AI’s Normative Rationality: Whose Values and For What Purpose? Keynote| Workshop “Aligning Al with Society” UNC Chapel Hill, USA | Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (25.-26.09.2025), Invited by Jana Hector and Lisa Koeritz, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.
• 03.09.2025: Generative AI’s Normative Rationality as a Challenge to Scientific Research. Talk| Special Event of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies, Invited by Dr. Esther Laufer, Director of the CAIS College to further develop the institute profile.
• 20.06.2025: Large Language Models, Machine Reading, and the Human Factor as Supplement. Invited Talk | BrAIve New Worlds: Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Concepts, Genres, Model Interpretations (19.-21.06.2025). Organized by Dr. Angela Gencarelli, Prof. Christine Schwanecke, Dr. Danica Stojanovic-Schaffrath, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Graz, Austria.
• 28.02.2025: "On Human and Machine Translation, Normative Gaps, and Trans Possibilities, with Deanna Cachoian-Schanz. Talk | Workshop New Reading Scenes, KWI Essen & SFB Virtuelle Lebenswelten RUB".
• 27.02.2025: New Reading Scenes: On Machine Reading and Reading Machine Learning Research. Introduction | Workshop New Reading Scenes, KWI Essen & SFB Virtuelle Lebenswelten RUB.
• 11.11.2024: L’intelligence artificielle comme projet de normativisation : vers denouvelles formes de pouvoir et de subjectivité. Lecture| Invited by Prof. Olivier Voirol, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.
• 27.06.2024: Von “outliers” zu “edge cases”: Machine Learnings Umgang mit Minderheitspositionen. Invited Talk | Conference: Critical Computing. Calculating with(in) Relations(27.-28.06.2024). Organized by Irina Raskin and Prof. Ulrike Bergermann, Braunschweig University of Art.
• 30.03.2023: From ‘Is’ to ‘Ought’: Data as Example in Machine Learning, with Alex Campolo. Talk| Conference: Data (Re)Makes the World. Organized by the Information Society Project, Yale Law School, New Haven, USA.
• 07.05.2022: Die Zukunft dokumentieren. Zur paranoiden Logik des Machine Learning. Keynote| Conference: Dokument Werden. Zeitlichkeit|Arbeit|Materialisierung, Organized by the DFG-Graduate School Das Dokumentarische. Exzess und Entzug, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
• 16.06.2021: Algorithmes prédictifs, cybernétisation de la société et biopolitique. Invited Talk | Conference: La fiction posthumaniste: projections, représentations et critiques du transhumanisme (15.-16.06.2021). Organized by Prof. Mara Magda Maftei, Université Paris-Nanterre, France.
• 25.03.2019: The Performativity of Predictions. Algorithms and Sentencing. Invited Lecture | “Theorizing” Lecture Series, CompLit Department, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
• 08.07.2021: Nancy’s Law of Touch and Its Violation in the Undercommons. Talk| DFG-Graduate School Medienanthropologie GRAMA, Bauhaus Universität Weimar.
• 13.04.2018: “Coupling Parts that are not Supposed to Touch”— Performativität der Berührungin den neuen Materialismen. Talk |Conference: Tangieren. Praktiken und Arrangements des Berührens in den performativen Künsten. Organized by the DFG-Network “Berühren: Literarische, mediale & politische Figurationen” Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg.