Expertise
Bart Karstens is affiliated to the Rathenau Institute since July 2019. He studies various topics pertaining to the digital society, such as digitalization in education, growing up digitally, explainability of algorithms, smart cities and quantum technology.
Education and career
Bart studied Cognitive Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University. He also received a research master’s degree in history of science from the same university. As a doctoral candidate, he focused on the conceptualization of errors in science. In 2015 he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis ‘Pluralism within Parameters. Towards a Mature Evaluative Historiography of Science’ at Leiden University. Since 2014 he was already involved as a postdoctoral researcher in the project ‘Legal Structures’ at the University of Amsterdam. This project explored the structure of legal texts using digital research methods. Subsequently he joined the NWO programme ‘The Flow of Cognitive Goods’ at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit, again as a postdoctoral fellow. The programme aimed to understand interdisciplinarity as the exchange of constituent elements of academic disciplines. Next to his research activities, Bart acted as an executive officer for the Society for the History of the Humanities and he was a member of the editorial staff of the journal History of Humanities.