Dr Ryan Wittingslow has been awarded a Humboldt Fellowship

University College Groningen's Dr Ryan Wittingslow has received a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his project "From Form to Function and Back Again: An Integrated Philosophy of Design".

From September 2022 to March 2024 Ryan will serve as a Senior Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) in addition to his role at the University of Groningen. The fellowship is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and has an approximate value of 80,000 euro.

Project aim

During a private tour of the Groninger Museum's design collection in late 2020, Ryan was struck by the confusion that impairs much of our conversations and opinions about design objects and processes. This confusion is not only a feature of ordinary language about design. To the contrary, philosophers and design theorists are also quite bad at talking to one another about design due to a lack of shared linguistic and conceptual infrastructure.

Inspired by this problem, in this project Ryan will draw on the insights of both philosophy of technology and philosophical aesthetics to build a common framework for philosophers, design theorists, and other scholars and practitioners who talk and think about design. He calls this framework an 'integrated philosophy of design'.

Academic background

Trained as an art historian and philosopher, Ryan works with a multidisciplinary approach in the fields of philosophy of technology, philosophical aesthetics, and political philosophy.

About the award

The Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers is among the most prestigious awards in Germany. The fellowship is awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany to "promote outstandingly qualified researchers and future leaders from science-related fields with the aim of creating a world-spanning collaborative network of excellence."