Sebastian Wessels

Sebastian Wessels studied Social Sciences (Political Science, Sociology, Social Psychology and Law) at the University of Hanover. In 2002 and 2003, he attended the postgraduate course "Sustainability, Planning and Environmental Policy" at the University of Wales in Cardiff. In his MSc thesis, he analyzed the notions of human needs employed in environmental discourses, as he had found that references to supposed needs are pivotal to many a political discourse, but the concept of needs itself is hardly ever discussed or substantiated.

Back in Hanover, where his studies focused on sociological theory, he took the investigation of the concept of needs a step further when graduating in 2005. At the heart of his study was the question how needs fuel societal development and how the latter in turn generates more needs. While this study was not framed as a contribution to environmental discourse in the narrower sense, it still tackles one of its most fundamental issues, which is the question how the high and ever-growing consumtion rates in industrialized countries come about and why they are so hard to let go of.

In the beginning of 2009, Sebastian Wessels joined the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research to work on the project "Autonomie - Handlungsspielräume des Selbst" and to write his dissertation about the human capacity for self-determined action in modern society, drawing upon the findings of the Center's study on autonomy on the one hand and the concept of the authoritarian personality on the other.

Research Project

Autonomy - Latitude of the Self