Michael Kaethler

I’m a researcher based in Belgium.

My background is rather diverse, skipping from political science, social anthropology, Slavonic literature and film, urban design and spatial planning. I currently find myself as a Marie-Curie research fellow and doctoral researcher at KU Leuven using social epistemology to understand how knowledge works in design and art.

In part due to a short attention span and wistful curiousity, the past years have been spent in different research positions, primarily in conflict and post-conflict contexts. However, these days I am either seated in comfortable armchairs in Brussels and Leuven or haphazardly engaging with design/designers or curating/curators.

I tend to position myself between worlds as neither designer nor researcher, in their strict definitions. I prefer not to hold to one domain or theoretical framework, instead, preferring to get mucky messing about in different fields taking a variety of roles and forming unlikely theoretical and practical bricolages.

My doctoral research has me brooding over how knowledge is manoeuvred by the curatorial—a perspective and practice where a kaleidoscope of different types of knowledge is brought together, mediated, translated and given various meanings. I am seeking to make some sense of this as well as to bring this model of knowledge conjunction and attitude to other contexts.

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