Kai Strycker, BSc, BA
Biography
Kai is a research assistant with the ERC Starting Grant Project FutureSpace and a master student at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. He is currently engaged in research for his FutureSpace master thesis, and is particularly interested in the elaborate entanglement of civil and military concerns in the European space industry. His research investigates the impact that this assemblage of interests has on the development and manufacturing of the Ariane 6.
His academic journey began at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where he completed his bachelor in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 after conducting research at the University of Kentucky. Desiring a change in focus, he pursued a bachelor of Philosophy at the Université de Strasbourg, spending a semester at the Université de Montréal as recipient of the “Initiative d'Excellence” scholarship.
This multidisciplinary background is at the heart of his research interest—dual-use capabilities of space technologies—combining a keen eye for technological specificities with a philosophical perspective inspired by STS theories such as heterogeneous engineering and ontological multiplicity. This interest translates into a research focus on the institutional, discursive and technological dimensions of the Ariane program.