I am a second-year PhD candidate at Sciences Po (Paris, France) affiliated with the Urban School and the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE).
I am interdisciplinary researcher, interested generally in understanding how institutions, instruments and imaginaries structure environmental action at the level of cities.
In my current research, I’m studying how attempts to build AI-systems for environmental governance are shaping urban ecological transitions. I try to understand how the process of innovation itself reorganizes (or reproduces) urban governance systems, and how this comes to shape collective action vis-a-vis the environment. How is ongoing experimentation with urban AI systems restructuring the playing field of local environmental politics?
To answer these (and other) questions, I employ mostly qualitative methods, drawing on a diverse set of perspectives from the sociology of public policy, organizational sociology, science and technology studies, urban political ecology, and critical theory. For my dissertation I’m using interviews, document analysis and ethnographic observation to follow urban AI projects across their lifecycle. My aim is to reconstruct evolutions in the networks of individuals, organizations, technologies, ideas, and capital that permit and constrain different forms of environmental governance.
Before beginning my PhD, I completed an MSc at Sciences Po in Urban Governance, Policy and Planning. Before that, I completed an undergraduate degree in Economics, Sociology and International Relations at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada).
Outside my academic work, I am an accomplished graphic designer and amateur pianist.
Hello and welcome 🙂
Contact: oskar.steiner [at] sciencespo.fr
Oskar Steiner 