Manja Unger-Büttner

Academic Profile

With degrees in Design, Philosophy, Literature and Cultural Studies, Manja Unger-Büttner holds the newly established Chair of Design Research, specialising in design philosophy and ethics. Since 2026, she has been Programme Director of the Master’s in Creative Direction at the Faculty of Design and serves on the Senate of Dresden University of Applied Sciences.
Interdisciplinary teaching and research – which spans faculties at the FHD – are just as close to her heart as fostering independent, well-rounded and responsible individuals.

Academic and professional background

Manja Unger-Büttner is a philosopher of design and technology, as well as a (meta-)ethicist. After studying Integrated Design in Dessau, she pursued studies in philosophy, literature and cultural studies in Heidelberg and Dresden, alongside freelance design work.

As a member of staff at the Chair of Philosophy of Technology under Prof. Dr Dr Bernhard Irrgang, she specialised further in the field of design philosophy. Through her many years of teaching in ethics, design and media philosophy, as well as (artistic) research in Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in communication, media and industrial design, she has developed unique academic and pedagogical approaches designed to foster students’ intellectual and research development in direct conjunction with their practical training at the University of Applied Sciences.

Key research areas and interests

The central theme of her research, lectures and publications is the development of an ethics derived from design – a topic discussed on numerous occasions in essays and currently being explored in a comprehensive book project under the title: Explorative Ethics.

Her research topics are directly linked to her teaching practice. Accordingly, they can be subdivided as follows:

Design philosophy:    

• Scope for creativity in design, connections between aesthetics and ethics
• Creative/artistic research, speculative design, design futuring
• Social design, co-design, social philosophy and design
• Philosophy of technology: methods, concepts (artificial intelligence, corporeality, …)
• Expanding approaches to the philosophy of technology through aspects of aesthetics as well as design and media theories
• the supposed dualism between nature and human culture and its implications for our technologically mediated everyday lives

Ethics:

• The use of design-based approaches in ethics (‘Socratic design’)
• Meta-ethics: between normativity and descriptiveness (explorative ethics)
• Hermeneutic ethics, moral scepticism
• Individual ethics and group responsibility
• Professional ethics, nursing ethics
• Ethics of AI and robotics design (anthropomorphism and design transparency)
• Ethics of Technology: Reflection on technology; moral questions regarding capability and permissibility in technological development

Teaching

The combination of design, philosophy, cultural studies and (meta-)ethics results in an interdisciplinary range of courses in the Master’s and Bachelor’s degree programmes across all faculties of the FHD.

Questions of professional responsibility and the reflective shaping of cultures and living environments are integral components even of the more practically oriented modules. This forward-looking approach provides appropriate preparation for the new challenges involved in working with technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Master’s:

• Aesthetic Practice & Research
• Design, AI & Responsibility
• Design Laboratory

Bachelor’s:

• Design and Ethics
• Design and Media Philosophy
• Design and Media Theories in Relation to Academic Research
• Transcultural Design
• Communication Theory
• Intercultural Communication

• Bachelor’s and Master’s supplementary modules

Publications (selection)

Unger-Büttner, Manja: Socratic Design? Exploratory Ethics and the Power of Utopian Thinking. In Dangl, Markus / Franz, Jürgen (eds.): Believing, Thinking, Knowing, Hoping. Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Academia and Practice. Berlin: Frank & Timme 2026, pp. 233–246.

Unger-Büttner, Manja / Knapp, Carolin / Kintscher-Schmidt, Frederike / Eckstein, Stefan / Lippert, Stefan (2024): Ethics, Values, Utopias – On the Instrumental Nature of Design in Addressing Questions about the Future. In: Ibach, M./ Augsten, A./ Vogelsang, A. (eds.): What could possibly go wrong: Impact and consequences in design. DGTF Annual Conference, Lucerne, 2024, pp. 170–176; available online at: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-952404

Unger-Büttner, Manja: Humanity, nature, culture and technology – reflections on the concept of enthusiasm for technology. In: Dangl, M./ Franz, J.H. (eds.): Nature, Culture and Technology. Philosophy, Natural Science and Technology, vol. 18. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2024, pp. 179–207.

Unger-Büttner, Manja: Design_Social_Philosophy. The Philosophy of Design and the Social. In: Friesen, Hans / Mittelstädt, Karin (eds.): Social Philosophy. Analysis and Critique of the Relationship between the Individual and Society. Brill/Fink, Paderborn 2022, pp. 63–81

Unger-Büttner, Manja / Barros, Roberto / Vitalli, Rogério: Corruption from a Philosophical Perspective on Technology. Reflections on Automation and Robotics Using Brazil as an Example. In: Friesen, Hans (ed.): In the Global Context of Corruption. Analyses of a Phenomenon from Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Karl Alber Verlag, Freiburg/Munich 2020, pp. 226–251.

Unger-Büttner, Manja: Future – Design – Ethics. An exploratory mix. In: Berr, Karsten/Franz, Jürgen (eds.): Shaping the Future – Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Philosophy. Frank & Timme 2019, pp. 41–52.

Lectures (selection)

21 June 2025 Believing, Knowing, Hoping: Exploratory Ethics and the Power of Utopian Thinking. At APHIN V – Thinking, Believing, Knowing, Hoping, 20–23 June 2025 in Enkirch.

9 May 2025 Ethics in the Design Industry – Futuring as a driver of sustainable societies. Panel discussion at the Federal Design Congress, ‘Dive’25’, followed by a workshop with Eileen Mandir and members of the VDID Ethics Project Group. Organised by the VDID (Frederike Kintscher, Stefan Eckstein, Stefan Lippert and Manja Unger-Büttner), moderated by Claudia Friedrich

3 May 2022 Design.Knowledge.Discourse. Norms, rules, standards … In search of lost values? Introductory lecture for the online discussion session on VDI Guideline 2424, organised by the VDID (Association of German Industrial Designers).

13 December 2018 Between the distribution of responsibility, the dilution of responsibility and moral scepticism: ethics in technical design. Lecture as part of the Rome Seminars at HTW Dresden, Department of Computer Science.

22 October 2017 Data Traces. On the lack of imagination in techno- and anthropomorphisms in speech, thought and design. Lecture delivered at the 14th ‘Datas Spuren 2017’ symposium organised by the Chaos Computer Club Dresden; video recording available online: https://media.ccc.de/v/DS2017-8692-datas_spuren

Projects (selection)

2022: Member of the ‘Industrial Design’ technical committee of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) as part of the drafting of the new VDI Guideline 2424 – Industrial Design – User-centred design in the production process

2021/22: Contribution to the interdisciplinary doctoral colloquium ‘Explainable AI / Trustworthy AI’ at the Algorithm Accountability Lab at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern with computer scientist Prof. Katharina Zweig, journalist Gert Scobel, philosopher of technology Prof. Bernhard Irrgang, linguist Prof. Jan Georg Schneider, and philosophers Ralf Becker and Johannes Lenhardt

2017: Participation in the collaborative project ‘Care4All – Development of a new human-technology interaction concept to support the care of people with dementia’, partners: HTW Dresden, Cultus gGmbH Dresden, Dresden University Hospital, Erlangen University Hospital, Cognitec Systems GmbH Dresden, Carus Consilium Sachsen GmbH

From 2013: ISR Senior Associate Research Fellow at the University of Reading, England (Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory (ISR), Prof. Atta Badii – The European Interdisciplinary Network of Excellence in Socio-ethical & Privacy-Preserving Video/Data Analytics.

Commitment

Manja Unger-Büttner is, amongst other things, a member of the German Society for Aesthetics (DGAE) and the Association of German Industrial Designers (VDID). Here, she is Chair of the VDID Central Germany Region, based in Dresden, and is active in the VDID project group ‘Ethik.Design’.

Within the German Design Day, she serves on the Council for Education and Science, Design Education and Research, and on the Education Committee of the German Cultural Council.