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About us

Karlshochschule combines business, society, and culture to create an international and practice-oriented study program.

Contact

  • Karlstraße 36 – 38, 76133 Karlsruhe, DE
  • +49 721 48095 0
  • info@karlshochschule.de
  • Mo. – Fr. 8:30 – 17:00 Uhr

Prof. Dr. Robert Lepenies

President of Karlshochschule International University

Professor of Pluralist & Heterodox Economics

Robert works on a question that sounds technical and turns out to be political: who decides what counts. Which pesticides get measured in a river and which do not. Which indicators define whether a development goal has been met. Whether a citizen’s air quality reading is evidence or merely an opinion. Trained in politics, philosophy and economics and now leading the university, he studies the machinery through which some knowledge becomes authoritative and other knowledge quietly disappears.

Economics has more than one school

Robert teaches economics as a contested field rather than a settled body of technique. Pluralist and heterodox approaches, the philosophy and ethics of the discipline, behavioural economics and its limits — his modules ask students to notice the assumptions a model carries before they use it, and to know what the alternatives would have shown. He was awarded the WIWA Young Talent Award for Plural Economics in 2015, and the commitment predates the prize. Students leave able to work with mainstream tools and to say precisely what those tools cannot see.

The politics inside behavioural policy

Much of Robert’s published work examines nudging and behavioural public policy — not to dismiss it, but to insist on questions the field often brackets. What happens to democratic accountability when policy works by shaping choices rather than arguing for them? Who authorises the expert doing the shaping? Written largely with Magdalena Małecka, this body of work is now cited across philosophy, law and public policy, and it sits at the centre of his teaching on ethics and expertise.

Environmental knowledge, and who is allowed to produce it

At the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Robert researched water governance and the politics of chemical pollution — including why pesticide contamination persists despite regulation, and how glyphosate concentrations in aquatic ecosystems come to be measured or overlooked. Alongside this he works on citizen science: air quality projects in Germany and Niger, and the harder theoretical question of whether participation genuinely redistributes epistemic authority or only appears to. His current projects cover ethics and expertise in crisis, water quality governance, and the politics of sustainable development indicators.

An international academic career

Robert studied PPE at Oxford, took an MSc in International Political Economy at the LSE, and completed his doctorate at the Hertie School in Berlin. He held a Fulbright-Schuman fellowship at Yale’s Global Justice Program and a Max Weber postdoctoral fellowship at the European University Institute, with further postdoctoral positions at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Freie Universität Berlin. From 2016 to 2021 he was a member of the Global Young Academy, elected for scientific excellence and service as one of 200 early-career researchers worldwide, and served on its executive committee.

President since 2021

Robert has been at Karlshochschule since October 2021 and serves as President of the university. He continues to teach and to supervise theses in policy and governance, environmental policy, philosophy of economics, political philosophy and sustainability studies. A president who still runs seminars is not a common arrangement. It is a deliberate one.

Deciding what gets measured is already a political act.

Facts, figures and the full CV

  • President, Karlshochschule International University
  • At the university since October 2021
  • Heterodox and pluralist economics
  • Sustainability science
  • Environmental policy
  • Methodology and empirical social science research
  • Philosophy and ethics of economics
  • International political economy
  • Pluralist Economics
  • Sustainable Development
  • Introduction to Political Science
  • Introduction to Scientific Methods
  • Globalization Studies
  • Alternative SocioEconomic Organizations
  • Environmental Policy
  • Globalization From Below
  • Behavioral Economics

Robert Lepenies is happy to supervise BA, MA and PhD theses in:

  • Policy and governance
  • Environmental policy
  • Philosophy of economics
  • Political philosophy
  • Sustainability studies
  • Ethics and Expertise in Times of Crisis — with Jessica Pykett (Birmingham) and Holger Straßheim (Bielefeld)
  • Water Quality Governance and the Politics of Chemical Pollution — with Frank Hüesker (Leipzig)
  • Behavioral Public Policy and Nudging — with Magdalena Małecka (Princeton) and others
  • Sustainable Development Goals: The Politics of Indicators — with Kurt Jax and Ilona Bärlund (Leipzig), Eeva Furman, Jari Lyytimäki, Eeva Primmer and Jyri Mustajoki (Helsinki), Nicolas Eckert and Raoul Mille (Paris) and others
  • Citizen Science and Air Pollution — with Lisa Herzog (Groningen) and Ibrahim Sidi Zakari (Niamey)
  • Several ongoing projects with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) Leipzig and the Global Young Academy
  • Dr. rer. pol. in Political Science (Governance), Hertie School of Governance Berlin (Thyssen Scholarship)
  • MSc in International Political Economy (Distinction), London School of Economics, UK
  • BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, UK
  • Fulbright-Schuman Scholar, Global Justice Program, Yale University, USA
  • Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellowship, Law Department, European University Institute, Italy (two years)
  • ASK Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Global Constitutionalism, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Practical Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin (DAAD recovery scholarship)
  • Visiting PhD Fellow, Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute, Italy
  • Research Scientist, Department of Environmental Politics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig
  • Lecturer and guest lecturer: Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences (Politics); Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (International Economic Thought; Governance); Freie Universität Berlin (Practical Philosophy); London School of Economics (Visiting Teaching Certificate)
  • Member of the Global Young Academy, 2016–2021, elected for scientific excellence and service as one of 200 young scholars worldwide; elected to the Executive Committee in 2019 and 2020
  • Selected to the International Science Council council on the public value of science
  • Full member, International Science for Poverty Eradication Committee, InterAcademy Partnership, since 2017
  • WIWA Young Talent Award for Plural Economics (2015)

Books

  • Beck, V., Hahn, H. & Lepenies, R. (eds.) (2020). Dimensions of Poverty: Measurement, Epistemic Injustices, Activism. Philosophy and Poverty. Springer International Publishing, 441 pp.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

  • Herzog, L. & Lepenies, R. (2022). Citizen science in deliberative systems: Participation, epistemic injustice, and civic empowerment. Minerva.
  • Hüesker, F. & Lepenies, R. (2022). Why does pesticide pollution in water persist? Environmental Science & Policy, 128, 185–193.
  • Lehmann, P., de Brito, M. M., Gawel, E., Groß, M., Haase, A., Lepenies, R. et al. (2021). Making the COVID-19 crisis a real opportunity for environmental sustainability. Sustainability Science.
  • Lehmann, P., Beck, S., de Brito, M. M., Gawel, E., Groß, M., Haase, A., Lepenies, R. et al. (2021). Environmental sustainability post-COVID-19: Scrutinizing popular hypotheses from a social science perspective. Sustainability, 13(16), 8679.
  • Lepenies, R. & Zakari, I. S. (2021). Citizen science for transformative air quality policy in Germany and Niger. Sustainability, 13(7), 3973.
  • Lyytimäki, J., Salo, H., Lepenies, R., Büttner, L. & Mustajoki, J. (2020). Risks of producing and using indicators of sustainable development goals. Sustainable Development.
  • Zingraff-Hamed, A., Schröter, B., Schaub, S., Lepenies, R. et al. (2020). Perception of bottlenecks in the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive. Water Alternatives, 13, 458–483.
  • Hendlin, Y. H., Arcuri, A., Lepenies, R. & Hüesker, F. (2020). The politics of (not) assessing glyphosate concentrations in aquatic ecosystems. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 11(3), 539–564.
  • Lepenies, R., Hüesker, F., Beck, S. & Brugnach, M. (2018). Discovering the political implications of coproduction in water governance. Water, 10(10), 1475.
  • Lepenies, R., Mackay, K. & Quigley, M. (2018). Three challenges for behavioral science and policy: The empirical, the normative and the political. Behavioural Public Policy, 2(2), 174–182.
  • Lepenies, R. & Małecka, M. (2015). The institutional consequences of nudging: Nudges, politics, and the law. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6(3), 427–437.

Peer-reviewed book chapters

  • Lepenies, R. & Małecka, M. (2019). The ethics of behavioral public policy. In Lever & Poama (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy, 513–525. Routledge.
  • Lepenies, R. & Małecka, M. (2019). Behavior change: Extralegal, apolitical, scientistic? In Straßheim & Beck (eds.), Handbook of Behavioral Change and Public Policy, 344–360. Edward Elgar.
  • Kersting, F., Lepenies, R. & Neef, T. (2019). Mehr als nur Werkzeuge. In Perspektiven einer pluralen Ökonomik, 209–229. Springer VS.
  • Małecka, M. & Lepenies, R. (2018). Is the behavioral approach a form of scientific imperialism? An analysis of law and policy. In Mäki, Walsh & Fernández Pinto (eds.), Scientific Imperialism, 254–273. Routledge.
  • Hahn, H. & Lepenies, R. (2017). Wissenschaft als politischer Beruf: Die Sustainable Development Goals als realistische Utopie. In P. Lepenies & E. Sondermann (eds.), Globale politische Ziele, 169–194. Nomos.

The full publication list is available on request.

Want to study with Robert?

He teaches across the Politics, PPE and International Relations programmes and supervises theses in policy, environmental governance and the philosophy of economics. Come to an info day, sit in on a session, or write to him directly.

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