Sarah Thanner




Sarah Thanner is an associated member of the PDA research group. She studied Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics in Regensburg and is currently completing her PhD research at on the becoming of human-technology relations and smart things at Friedrich Schiller University Jena at the intersection of Digital Anthropology and Science and Technology studies.

Until February 2023, Sarah collaborated with the PDA group as a researcher in the BMBF-funded project VIGITIA, which aimed to develop a framework for augmented tabletop surface technology. Among other things, there she was concerned with the development of participatory design formats and methods to facilitate public engagement in technological development.

Sarah's research interests are wide-ranging and she is involved in a variety of multimodal collaborations, such as CECO (Code Ethnography Collective) or the Studiolab.arbeit an Arbeit. For more information on her research visit her page at FSU Jena.

Rebecca Carlson, Ruth Dorothea Eggel, Lina Franken, Sarah Thanner, Libuše Hannah Vepřek

Approaching code as process: Prototyping ethnographic methodologies

Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur 1/2021: „Code“, 2021-07-21 () (more...)

Sarah Thanner

Augmented Truths on the Table – an ethnographic investigation in the field of digital-material innovation

7th conference of the Section “Digitization in Everyday Life” of the German Association of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore Studies (dgv) on “Digital Truth-Making - Ethnographic Perspectives on Practices, Infrastructures and Affordances of Truth-Making in Digital Societies” at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Story Map), 2020-10-09 () (more...)

Project: BirdsEye: Capturing top-view images of tabletop usage (2020-05-01 - )

A toolkit for capturing and analyzing tabletop usage.


Project: Prototype deployment in the Degginger Cafe (2021-02-23 - )

Imagine you go out to eat and an “intelligent” table shows you the menu and informs you about the origin of the products. Or maybe it lets you bridge the waiting time for your meal with a little game. With our VIGITIA prototype we explore these and other ideas at the Degginger Cafe in Regensburg


Project: Pop-Up Participatory Design facilitates Ideation, User Research, and Outreach (2020-01-09 - )

Pop-Up Participatory Design facilitates Ideation, User Research, and Outreach


Project: Survey on table use in everyday life (2020-06-04 - 2020-08-18)

Results of our survey on table use in everyday life (2020).


Project: Vigitia Meets Degginger 2.0 (September 2021) (2021-09-20 - 2021-09-25)

From September 20 to 25, 2021, we presented three prototypes to an interested public at Regensburg's Degginger Cultural and Creative Center. The primary goals of the exhibition were to generate ideas for further application scenarios and use cases, user research, public relations and science communication.


Project: VIGITIA meets Degginger 3.0 (March 2022) (2022-03-15 - 2022-03-19)

From March 15 to 19, 2021, we presented three prototypes to an interested public at Regensburg's Degginger Cultural and Creative Center. The primary goals of the exhibition were to generate ideas for further application scenarios and use cases, user research, public relations and science communication.


Project: Vigitia Meets Degginger (September 2020) (2020-09-14 - 2020-09-19)

Public exhibition of first project results