Yvonne Förster

Short CV

Yvonne Förster is a philosopher whose work explores human-machine relations, technological cultures and the role of technology in contemporary art. She earned her PhD in Philosophy at Friedrich Schiller University Jena with a dissertation on the perception and ontology of time.

She has taught aesthetics at Bauhaus University Weimar and was appointed Junior Professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg in 2010. Following six years there, she held Senior Research Fellowships at leading institutes of advanced studies such as MECS (Media Cultures of Computer Simulation) in Lüneburg and the Institute for Cultural Studies in Konstanz, focusing on cultural narratives of human–machine interaction and the aesthetics of technology.

She has served as Visiting Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Kassel, and the University of Flensburg. In 2019, she was appointed Foreign Expert at Shanxi University in Taiyuan, China.

Her current research brings philosophy into dialogue with contemporary tech culture with focus on inclusive environments, sustainability, and the design of future life-worlds. As a speaker she internationally presents on topics like critical posthumanism, art and technology, aesthetics and fashion philosophy. 

Website: www.yvonnefoerster.com

Selected Awards

• 2021, Senior Research Fellow at GCAS, Global Centre for Advanced Studies, College Dublin
• 2017, Research Fellow at Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg (Institute for Advanced Studies in Cultural Science), University of Konstanz, Topic: Emergent Intelligences. Neural and Artificial Nets in Science, Cinema and Art
• 2016, Senior Research Fellow at MECS (Media Cultures of Computer Simulation), Leuphana University Lüneburg, funded by German Research Association, Topic: From Neural Nets to Artificial Intelligences
• 2010, Award for best PhD thesis of the year, Friedrich Schiller University Jena 

Research Interests

Philosophy of Technology, Embodied Cognition , Art and Creativity in Technological Cultures, Philosophical Posthumanism , Fashion Theory (Wearables, Body Enhancement, Gender)

 

Selected Publications

Monographs and Collected Volumes

• 2020, Perceiving Truth and Value. Phenomenological Deliberations on Ethical Perception, series: Religion, Theology, and Natural Science, Yvonne Förster, David Andrew Gilland, Markus Mühling (Eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht.
• 2019, Moden der Kleidung - Moden des Geistes, Hubertus Busche, Yvonne Förster (Eds.), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
• 2012, Zeiterfahrung und Ontologie. Perspektiven moderner Zeitphilosophie. (Experience and Ontology of Time. Perspectives of Modern Philosophy of Time), München: Fink.

Peer-reviewed Articles

• 2025, forthcoming, Empty Masks and Uncanny Appearances: Reflections on Masks in Digital Culture, in: Lior Levy, Massimo Leone (Eds.): Masks and Faces, FACETS Advances in Face Studies, London, New York: Routledge.
• 2025, accepted, forthcoming, (co-authored with Maren Wehrle) Normative Technology and the Body: The 4N Approach Combining Phenomenology and STS, in: Lisa Käll and Kristin Zeiler (Eds.), Subjectivity, Embodiment, Agency: At the Intersection between Feminist Phenomenology and Feminist Technoscience, New York: Routledge.
• 2023 Technologies of Religion: From Prayer Bots to a Looming Singularity, in: Nathan Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska (Eds.), Diversifying Philosophy of religion. Critiques, Methods and Case Studies, London: Bloomsbury, 263-278.
• 2021 Zwischen Mensch und Maschine: Zeitstrukturen in technologischen Lebenswelten,       in: Jahrbuch für Technikphilosophie, Nomos, 53-68.
• 2020 Aesthetics of the Past and the Future, Human Life within Changing Environments, in: Zoltan Somhegyi und Max Ryynänen (Eds.): Aesthetics in Dialogue, Bern: Peter Lang, DOI:https://doi.org/10.3726/b16690, 237-250.
• 2019 Artificial Intelligence - The Dialectics of Transparency, in: Andreas Sudmann (Ed.), The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence. Net Politics in the Era of Learning Algorithms, Bielefeld: Transcript, 175-188.
• 2018 Wenn künstliche Intelligenz laufen lernt. Verkörperungsstrategien im Machine Learning, in: Christoph Engemann and Andreas Sudmann (Eds.), Machine Learning. Medien, Infrastrukturen und Technologien der Künstlichen Intelligenz, Bielefeld: Transcript, DOI: 10.14361/9783839435304-015, 325-340.