Severin Engelmann

Severin Engelmann is a PhD Student at the Professorship of Cyber Trust and currently a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, USA. His hosting professor is Prof. Deirdre Mulligan.

With a background in philosophy of technology and computer science, Severin is an ethicist focusing on the ethics of digital platforms and systems. His research explores the transparency of digitalized reputation mechanisms in the Chinese Social Credit System and examines the feasibility of participatory governance of commercial social media platforms. Currently, he studies how non-experts in AI ethically evaluate AI inference-making across computer vision decision-making scenarios. In this research project, he also investigates whether and to what extent participatory approaches to AI ethics help advance the ethical governance of algorithmic systems. Severin applies a multidisciplinary research methodology. This includes conceptual and theoretical work, data-driven policy analyses, as well as experimental vignette studies.

Between April and August 2021, Severin was a visiting scholar at Prof. Anna Baumert’s group Moral Courage at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany.