Dr. Maja-Lisa Müller

I am currently working on two research projects. In the project with the working title ‘Container Technologies 4.0’, drawing on Critical Software Studies, I aim to analyse container software such as ‘Docker’ in terms of its spatial-theoretical and (thereby) gendered/gendering and racialised/racialising conditions. In my study, which is structured as a micro-monograph, I display that, following Linda Hentschel and Zoë Sofia/Sofoulis, virtualised space is assumed to be potentially infinitely occupiable and thus controllable, and that any openings or ‘leaks’ within it are problematised (see Angerer/Richardson/Schmedes/Sofoulis 2024). To date, these concepts have been conceived in largely binary terms; building on this problem description, I wish to develop a concept of queer container technology that takes account of the relational and emergent nature of virtual containers and centres on their role as infrastructures of care (as described by Sofia/Sofoulis: ‘facilitating environment’).

The second project, ‘Mattering Mushrooms’, combines discourses of New Materialism with the history of science and examines the epistemic and ontological status of fungi and mycelia. A fundamental thesis is that the centuries-old status of fungi as ‘abject’ can be traced back to their onto-epistemically uncertain status, and that they should be approached through other, for example processual, ontologies. Whilst they have repeatedly been stylised in the history of mycology as the ‘Other’ to humankind, there has recently been increasing reflection on their connecting, convivial status. Recent biological research highlights that the distinction between ‘fungus’ and ‘environment’ cannot be clearly defined and that, consequently, the distinction itself is called into question or – according to my approach – manifests itself as ongoing, processual operations of differentiation. In this process of differentiation, particular focus will be placed on the historical role of images and their epistemic potential.

Member of the board of the Centre for Theories in Historical Research (Bielefeld University)
Member of the research area "The Material as an Interface between Temporality and Historicity" (Bielefeld University)
Member of the Society for Media Studies (working groups EcoMedia, Media Theory and Science Studies)
Editorial board member of the Journal for Media Studies
Member of the German Association for Art History
Member of the Trade Union for Education and Science (GEW)
Member of the teaching committee