Jan Knöferl M.A.

2018-2022 B.A. in Media and Cultural Studies, Minor in German Literature, thesis title: “Images that Matter. Visualizations of the Brain using Brainbow” (Advisor: Bettina Papenburg), University of Freiburg

2022-2025 M.A. in Media Studies, thesis title: “Oil as Oil. Media Ecologies of Petromodernity” (Advisors: Bernhard Siegert and Moritz Hiller), Bauhaus-University Weimar

since 04/2026 Junior Researcher (Professorship for Media Studies), PhD project: Digital Twins of the Earth and the Platformization of Planetary Future-Making

In my PhD project “Digital Twins of the Earth and the Platformization of Planetary Future-Making” (working title), I examine the European Union–funded initiative “Destination Earth,” which develops digital twins of the Earth system for climate simulation and makes them accessible via an interactive platform. Drawing on platform and infrastructure studies, (ecologized) theory of cultural techniques, and operational analysis, I analyze how such platforms produce new kinds of knowledge about planetary futures and how these are used to intervene in ecological processes.

My project argues that digital twins of the Earth enact the very planetary futures they model by collapsing the distinction between the prediction of and intervention in futures. In doing so, they establish a mode of “future-making” that aims to render futures fully determinable in the present.

Jan Knöferl, “Erdöl. Medientechniken der Exploration”, in Vermittlung – Materialität – Milieu. Studien zu einer relationalen Medienanthropologie, ed. Mirko Beckers, Lorenzo Gineprini, Jens Kraushaar and Ulrike Wirth (Transcript, 2026), pp. 169-173.