Course Models: Knowing, Making and Experimenting with Worlds

Course description

Models are ubiquitous across scientific, scholarly, and creative practices. From mathematical simulations and architectural prototypes to conceptual diagrams and analytical abstractions, models allow us to simplify complex phenomena, illustrate different compositions, and make aspects of the world available to analysis and intervention. Yet models do not merely represent pre-existing realities. They can also participate in producing the objects, relations, and possibilities they seek to describe.

This PhD course explores models as epistemic, material, and experimental practices. Drawing primarily on anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), while engaging questions relevant to a range of other disciplines, including philosophy, history, design, and aesthetics, we will consider three interrelated questions: What are models, and how do they produce knowledge? What do models do in the worlds in which they are made and used? And how might we think with, through, or against models in our own research?

Through collective discussion and experimental exercises, participants will critically examine the possibilities and limitations of models as tools for thinking, making, and intervening. Rather than presupposing a particular definition or method of modelling, the seminar invites participants to explore what models make possible, what they leave out, and how their assumptions and operations might be reimagined.

The course runs for a day and a half. The first day is split into 3 sessions, while the second day’s session focusses on active engagement and experimentation with modelling as a research practice.

Day 1: Modelling in 3 Acts

• 1) What are models?

Readings: Sismondo (1999) and Parker (2009)

An introduction to models as devices that produce knowledge by other means than simply representing existing realities. What distinguishes models from theories, experiments, simulations, and representations? How should we understand the relationship between models, their objects, and the worlds they seek to capture?

• 2) What do models do?

Readings: Yaneva (2005) and Ballestero (2003). Suggested: Tsing (2012)

Through examples from architecture and environmental research, this session examines what happens when models are constructed, manipulated, circulated, and put to work. How do models create objects of attention? What kinds of relations and transformations do they enable? What do they exclude or make difficult to understand?

• 3) How do models think?

Readings: Viveiros de Castro (2019) and Gan (2021). Suggested: Morgan (2005).

Turning from models as objects of analysis to modelling as a mode of inquiry, this session considers how models, diagrams, and examples can generate questions, insights, and experimental possibilities. What kinds of thinking become possible through making or modifying models? What happens when we work through examples rather than models? When should models be revised, challenged, or abandoned?

Day 2: Experimenting with Models

On day 2, we will do an experimental exercise in which participants are invited to work with models in relation to their own research questions and materials, either individually or in smaller groups. Through constructing, adapting, or critically interrogating models, participants will explore how different forms of modelling can open new analytical possibilities, while also considering their limitations and potential alternatives. The exercise is intended to encourage experimentation and reflection rather than the production of finished models, and no prior experience with modelling is required. Afterwards, each participant or group will present their models for joint discussion.

Aim/Learning outcomes

The overall objective of the course is to provide PhD students with the conceptual and analytical tools to:

1. understand and critically engage with models as epistemic, material, and experimental practices across different disciplines;
2. examine how models shape the ways in which phenomena are represented, understood, and made available for action and intervention;
3. explore the possibilities and limitations of working with models as tools for thinking, analysis, and experimentation in their own research.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• identify and discuss different understandings of models, including their relationships to representation, experimentation, and knowledge production;
• analyse how models are constructed, used, and transformed, and how they enable or constrain particular ways of understanding and engaging with the world;
• reflect on the epistemic, methodological, and political implications of modelling practices across disciplinary contexts;
• experiment with models, diagrams, or other analytical devices in relation to their own research questions and materials;
• critically assess the possibilities and limitations of modelling in their own research, including when alternative approaches might be more productive.

Requirements for participation

Participants are expected to:

• Submit a brief description of their PhD research project (max. 2 pages), outlining its central research questions, theoretical or conceptual interests, and methodological approach.
• Submit a short reflection on models in relation to their research (max. 1 page). This may address how models already figure in their research, whether as objects of study, conceptual frameworks, analytical tools, or experimental devices; how they might imagine working with models; or what questions, possibilities, or challenges concerning models and modelling they would like to explore. Prior experience with model-making is not required.
• Read the six required texts in advance of the course and actively participate in discussions.
• Bring a research question, example, or piece of material from their own work that they would like to explore during the experimental exercise. This could include an existing model, a conceptual or analytical problem, an empirical case, a diagram, or other relevant research material.

The submitted materials will help the organizers prepare the experimental exercise and accommodate participants' different research interests and disciplinary backgrounds.

Target group/Participants

• The course is aimed at PhD students across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including anthropology, information studies, global studies, philosophy, history of ideas, aesthetics and culture, and related fields. It is relevant to students who engage with models of various kinds, whether as empirical objects of study, conceptual or analytical tools, or experimental devices, as well as those interested in exploring the possibilities and limitations of modelling in their own research.

Workload

• Course/ teaching hours: 8
• Preparation hours: 16 (readings).
• Written assignments etc.:

Language 

• English

Lecturers

• Andrea Ballestero, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Southern California
• Noa Vaisman, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Aarhus University
• Frederik Vejlin, Postdoc, Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University

Literature

Session 1: What are models?

• Sismondo, S. (1999). Models, simulations, and their objects. Science in Context, 12(2), 247-260.
• Parker, W. S. (2009). Does matter really matter? Computer simulations, experiments, and materiality. Synthese, 169(3), 483-496.

Session 2: What do models do?

• Yaneva, A. (2005). Scaling up and down: Extraction trials in architectural design. Social studies of science, 35(6), 867-894.
• Ballestero, A. (2023). Casual planetarities: Choreographies, resonance, and the geologic presence of people and aquifers. Environmental Humanities, 15(3), 266-283.
• (Suggested: Tsing, A. L. (2012). On nonscalability: The living world is not amenable to precision-nested scales. Common knowledge, 18(3), 505-524.)

Session 3: What do models make possible?

• Viveiros de Castro, E. (2019). On models and examples: engineers and bricoleurs in the Anthropocene. Current Anthropology, 60(S20), S296-S308.
• Gan, E. (2021). Diagrams: making multispecies temporalities visible. Experimenting with Ethnography: A Companion to Analysis, 106-20.
• (Suggested: Morgan, M. S. (2005). Experiments versus models: New phenomena, inference and surprise. Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2), 317-329.)

Place: 

Aarhus Campus, Room: TBA

Course dates:

• 08 December 2026 09:00 - 17:00
• 09 December 2026 09:00 - 13:00