Michael Schönwolff is a doctoral researcher at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology (STS Department, TUM). His research explores the production, communication, and evaluation of scientific knowledge, with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the DFG research group “Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice”, he works in the DFG-funded project “De- and Restabilization of Evidence during the Corona Crisis”. In this project, he focuses on how biomedical researchers questioned and stabilized scientific knowledge claims on COVID-19 through evaluative processes and addressed emerging epistemic uncertainties during the health crisis.
Michael studied sociology and political science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU) and social work at the KSH Munich. While completing his master’s degree in sociology, he worked as a student assistant in the BMBF-funded project “Civil Society Organizations and Challenges of Migration and Diversity: Agents of Change (ZOMiDi)” (2018-2021) and at the chair of Qualitative Methods in Empirical Social Research at the LMU Munich. In his master’s thesis, he examined how migrants became included in the organizational processes of the AIDS Service Organization in Germany. Since 2021, he is a doctoral student and research associate in Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller’s team for Science and Technology Policy (STS Department, TUM)
- “How does the World Health Organization know about Transformative Biomedical Technologies?”, Excellence Cluster TransforM (DFG), seit 2026
- “The De- and Restabilization of Evidence during the Corona Crisis” (DFG), 2021–2024
- Kostimpas, Dimitra; Schönwolff, Michael (2022): Zwischen Sozialer Arbeit, Lebensweltnähe und Selbstbestimmung. Migrant:innen in der lokalen Aidshilfe. In: von Unger, Hella; Baykara-Krumme, Helen; Karakayali, Serhat; Schönwälder, Karen (Hg.) Organisationaler Wandel durch Migration? Diversität der Zivilgesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 193-211. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839459850-007
- Kornehl, Karolin; Laumer, Angelika; Schönwolff, Michael; Schug, Markus (2022): Whose truths? Whose facts? Cultures of Evidence Beyond and Across Academic Disciplines. H-Soz-Kult. https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-131097
- “Politics of Knowledge in Health: Biomedicine, Risk, and Identity“, lecture in “Responsibility in Environment and Health: Social and Cultural Perspectives on Environment, Health, Science, and Technology” (SS 2025)
- “STS 1: Practices and Politics of Science and Technology”, tutorial (WS 2023/2024, 2024/25)
- “Lays & Experts: The Politics of Participation”, lecture in “Technology and Society: Economics, Politics, Ethics, Law, and Media” (WS 2023/24)
- “Forschungsprojekt: Herausforderungen der Biomedizin. Soziale, politische und ethische Dimension der medizinischen Biologie” [Research Project: Challenges of Biomedicine: Social, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Medical Biology], seminar (WS 2022/23, SS 2024, WS 2024/25, WS 2025/26)
- “Herausforderungen der Biomedizin: Soziale, politische und ethische Dimensionen der medizinischen Biologie” [Challenges of Biomedicine: Social, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Medical Biology], seminar (SS 2022, TUM)
- “Academic Skills”, seminar (WS 2021/2022, TUM)
- “Angewandte Qualitative Methoden: Inhaltsanalyse und visuelle Methoden” [Applied Qualitative Methods: Content Analysis and Visual Methods], seminar (SS 2020, LMU München)
- BA lecture „Einführung in die Methoden der qualitativen Sozialforschung“ [Introduction to the Methods of Qualitative Social Research] (Prof. Dr. Hella von Unger), tutorial (WS 2019/2020 & WS 2020/2021, LMU München)
- BA lecture „Soziologische Theorien“ [Sociological Theories] (Prof. Dr. Armin Nassehi), tutorial (SS 2019, LMU München)
- Schönwolff, Michael, and Müller, Ruth (2024, peer-reviewed): Questioning Quality: How researchers (e)valuated knowledge about COVID-19 during the pandemic. Conference EASST-4S “Making and Doing Transformations”. Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Schönwolff, Michael, and Müller, Ruth (2023): Dealing with Uncertainties: How researchers (e)valuated the reliability of evidence during the Corona Crisis. Presentation at the Symposium “Evidence Regime(s) in Contemporary Knowledge Societies” of the DFG-group 2448 “Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice”. Munich, Germany.
- Schönwolff, Michael, and Müller, Ruth (2022): Solid evidence? Evaluating the Reliability of Evidence in Biomedicine during the Corona Crisis. Poster presentation at the Symposium „Whose Truths? Whose Facts? Cultures of Evidence Beyond and Across Academic Disciplines” of the DFG-group 2448 “Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice”. German-Italian Centre for European Dialogue, Villa Vigoni, Italy.