Patrizia Nanz is Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, Professor of Transformative Sustainability Studies at the University of Potsdam, and Chair of the European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP).

Her research interests include ecological and social sustainability, the future of democracy/democratic participation, and the relationship between science and democracy.

Patrizia Nanz studied philosophy and history in Munich, Frankfurt/Main and Montreal and earned a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. Before working at the IASS, she was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn), the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Westminster University (London), and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen (KWI). She has held a professorship in political theory at the University Bremen since 2002. Patrizia Nanz was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies/Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin as well as at MIT (Cambridge, MA). She engages in many public policy debates, for instance as a co-investigator of the Wiki-Platform Participedia.net, a database on democratic innovations worldwide, as Chair of the German government’s Science Platform Sustainability 2030, and as a member of the “Hightech-Forum”, an academic committee that advises the German government on science and technology.

Her publications include: No representation without consultation: A citizen’s guide to participatory democracy (co-authored with Claus Leggewie, Between the Lines Books, forthcoming 2019).