Research

Institution and Technology: The Subject and the Question of Autonomy in the Age of Blockchain and Generative Artificial Intelligence

Defense October 2026

This book delivers a comprehensive anthropologic-philosophical examination of how emerging technologies – specifically blockchain and generative artificial intelligence – are fundamentally challenging traditional institutional structures and reconfiguring the relationship between subjects and institutions in contemporary Western societies. The work investigates whether these technologies can deliver on their promise to provide subjects with genuine autonomy beyond institutional constraints, or whether they instead establish new, potentially more rigid forms of heteronomy.

Protocol Studies: Making Art, Rethinking Law, Crafting Social Relations

01.01.2026 - 31.08.2027 | Total amount: 439.890 EUR | Program: Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies

My role: Principal Investigator. Coord-PI: Johannes Bennke (Film-University Babelsberg), Co-PI: Ella Klik (Bar Ilan University, Israel).

How can artistic practices explore Web3 protocols to reveal their aesthetic, legal, and historical dimensions, enrich media theory, and reimagine new forms of governance? This project develops "Protocol Studies" as a new media studies research direction that examines protocols – especially in the context of Web3 – as media that shape social, legal, and governance structures. At the center is the analysis of artistic practices (such as terra0, Beecoin, or works by Hito Steyerl) that experiment with decentralized protocols to explore alternative forms of coordination, authentication, and democratic organization. The project will result in an international open-access reference work, an expert workshop, as well as a podcast and website for public engagement with these emerging digital forms of legitimacy and organization.

Virtual Ownership

01.01.-31.12.2024 | Total amount: 15.420 EUR | Program: BRAINSTORM

My role: Coordinating Principal Investigator. Co-PI: Réka Markovich (Computer Sciences Department, Uni.Lu)

With the interdisciplinary research group Blockchain BRIDGES, I founded in early 2022 at the University of Luxembourg, we received funding to pursue our research on virtual ownership: What does it mean to be the owner of an asset when the assets or the environment in which the transaction that establishes ownership takes place are completely virtual? The aim of the project is to evaluate and elaborate the emancipatory potential of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) such as blockchains to create a more democratic and equitable version of ownership in the virtual space than the current commercialised model.

Organisation of two international workshops (04/2025 and 11/2025) to lay the groundwork for preparing a follow-up research project.

OAASIS – Ownership, Authorship and Accountability Systems In virtual Spaces

Total amount: 460.000 EUR | Program: AUDACITY

My role: Coordinating-PI. Co-PI: Réka Markovich (Computer Science Department, Uni.LU)

Generative AI and blockchain technologies are profoundly transforming the legal and cultural notion of ownership, as authorship and property rights become increasingly difficult to define and enforce in decentralized, virtual environments. OAASIS addresses the challenges surrounding ownership, authorship, and accountability where blockchain's transnational architecture fractures judicial boundaries and AI blurs creative agency. The project integrates three research streams: cultural theory (tracing shifts from material possession to virtual abstraction), legal analysis (examining EU law's capacity to govern AI-generated works and blockchain-based assets), and computational legal theory (developing formal languages to capture evolving ownership concepts). Its aim is to produce foundational theory, legal design principles, and formal frameworks for understanding ownership in virtual environments.

Awarded but not disbursed due to the subsequent cancellation of the funding line by the institute

Blockchain and the Transformation of Justice

Together with Prof. Jean Lassègue (Director of Centre Georg Simmel, EHESS, Paris), I am working on a research project on the transformation of the concept of justice through so-called decentralised arbitration platforms. We aim to critically assess the latest blockchain developments in the legal field, such as mediator bots and other AI-blockchain intersections, and to develop solutions to harness their potential without falling into the traps of new, opaque power concentrations, bias, and corruption structures.

« Blockchain BRIDGES »

In this interfaculty group at Uni.Lu which I founded in 2022, we are studying how Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are expanding into socio-economic, legal, political, and cultural domains, challenging traditional notions of transactions and social interactions. Our work spans topics such as self-sovereign identity, algorithmic governance, DeFi voting rights, NFTs, oracle trust, tensions with GDPR, and the broader implications of permissionless blockchains. A common thread is the persistent gap between the physical and blockchain realms, between interpretable law and executable code, which no single discipline or paradigm can adequately address. To bridge these gaps, the Blockchain BRIDGES research group brings together scholars from multiple fields to share concepts, track regulatory developments, and develop collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to future research.

Technique – symbolique – pouvoir

In the research group I founded with Prof. Pierre Musso (Télécom ParisTech/University of Rennes) in 2019, former and current fellows of the IEA Nantes meet on a quarterly basis to discuss the dynamics between technology, symbolics and power. Currently, we focus on how conceptions and approaches to death evolve with technological progress.

Public Opinion

Together with Prof. Gérard Raulet (Paris-Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme) and Prof. Christian Bermes (RPTU Landau) we have initiated a yearly conference series at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik. We are exploring the necessity of symbolic means and mediation in political representation, emphasizing the dangers of radicalism that emerge from the trend towards direct democracy facilitated by new communication media.

Conference series

« Formen ziviler und politischer Repräsentation. Eine Bestandsaufnahme auf der Grundlage der philosophischen Anthropologie und der Kritischen Theorie » together with Prof. Christian Bermes (University of Koblenz-Landau) and Prof. Gérard Raulet (University Paris-Sorbonne), October 2017 – June 2019.

• Active member of Critical Data Lab at Humboldt-University, led by Anna-Verena Nosthoff and Felix Maschewski
• Active member of research group "Foundations of the philosophy of digitality", led by Prof. Christoph Durt (TMU Munich). Monthly online meetings and discussions of foundational texts concerning AI and digitality.
• Membre associé au Centre Georg Simmel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris