Lukas Seidler
The Politics and Materialities of Harvesting Robotics
Department of Philosophy/ Science, Technology and Society Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University
Supervisors: Dani Shanley, Darian Meacham, Rico Möckel
Background
I have a BA and an MA in Philosophy. For my MA-thesis, I researched the concept of sea-level rise, focusing on its political, techno-scientific, and cultural dimensions. I reworked this for publication (see below). Furthermore, I have a MSc in Medical Anthropology and Sociology. Here, I researched the imaginaries surrounding the export of Dutch ‘nature’ based solutions and the dredging industry that they are enmeshed with. Finally, as a student assistant I have organized the activities of the Platform for the Ethics and Politics of Technology in Amsterdam
Content
In my PhD project, I will do a multispecies ethnography of the development of a harvesting robot and its lab as they are being constructed and tinkered with in Venlo. Currently, my guiding research question is: How do materialities, topologies, and politics of (not-only) humans, plants, and robots emerge through automating harvesting at an agritech institute in Venlo? Through participating in the day-to-day development of the harvesting robot(s), investor events, and the entrepreneurial ‘climate’ of Brightlands Venlo, I aim to trace the circulations of capital and planetary patchiness that practices of automating harvesting emerge through. Drawing on a multispecies lens, I will be especially attentive to the multiplicity of perspectives that are embodied in these spaces (plants, bats, insects, robots, humans). More specifically, such a perspective could highlight how these manifold and indeterminate materialities are mobilised as part of various political economic regimes, capitalist and otherwise. In conducting such an ethnography, a key focus is also to collaborate with my interlocutors on what a ‘lab’ could be besides a site for technological development. In doing so, the project aims to contribute to current conversations between feminist new materialisms, political economy of agriculture, and STS
Publications
2025. “Swelling Horizons: Sea-Level Rise, Coloniality, and their Otherwise”. Annali Di Ca’Foscari. Serie Orientale, no. 3 (Supplement): 83-120. 10.30687/annor/2385-3042/2025/03/004
2025. “Holding Water to Hold Water: Comparing Levees and Tajines as Bodies of Water” in Reconnections: The Humanities in a Time of Climate Change, edited by Thomas Mantzaris. Thessaloniki: Helaasdp Publishers. 10.12681/helaasdp.253
