Fabian Kölsch M.A.

Who am I?

I am Fabian Kölsch, a doctoral researcher in sociology with a focus on the sociology of education and the sociology of e/valuation. From 2022 to 2025, I investigated university assessment practices in the disciplines of history and engineering as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). My publications address, among other topics, the trans-situational entanglement of teaching, examination, and e/valuation, as well as the practices of e/valuation in higher education.
My work is situated at the intersection of the sociology of e/valuation, the sociology of education, and organization studies. I am particularly interested in how educational organizations — especially universities — produce, observe, and attribute “performance,” and in the role that disciplinary self-positionings play in these processes.

What is the purpose of my research?

Within the Collaborative Research Center, I examine the use of and discourse surrounding “artificial intelligence” in higher education. The central question is how differentiation according to performance changes when "AI" enters teaching and examination practices. Under these conditions, what can still be claimed as (individual or collective) performance?
Methodologically, I situate my research within the qualitative research paradigm, relying primarily on expert interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. I am interested in concrete practices and their justifications: How and under what conditions do members of universities teach and assess? How are decisions rendered plausible within organizational contexts — and how does “AI” reshape the routines and taken-for-granted assumptions of university practice?

Why human differentiation?

The perspective of human differentiation enables me to sharpen my research object conceptually. Its strength lies in the systematic comparison of cases, through which similarities and differences in human practices of classification become visible — whether these classifications concern humans, machines, or other beings.