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Eva Albers

University of Freiburg
Medicine, Philosophy
Research Assisatant SALTUS! Gruppe Responsible Artificial Intelligence

Room 01 027
Phone +49 (0)761 203-97442
Fax +49 (0)761 203 97451

CV

Eva Albers has studied Medicine since 2013 and Philosophy since 2017 at the University of Freiburg. Her main interest lies in the exploration of the underlying anthropological concepts of medical practice. Inspired by the question, “What does it mean to help another human being lead a (more) healthy life?”, she focuses on the use of phenomenological methods for therapeutic situations, embodiment theories, and existentialist theory. As part of the interdisciplinary research project L’homme machine by the cluster of excellence BrainLinks – BrainTools in 2018, she researched the potential of artistic approaches to technological innovations in neuroscience through what she calls “Körperbildinterviews”, a performative art installation that tries to verbally and graphically grasp a representation of a person’s embodied self. Currently, she works in the Saltus! Group Responsible Artificial Intelligence concerning the effect of artificially intelligent neurotechnological devices on the patient’s sense of agency.

FRIAS-Projekt

Agency and Neurotechnology

Together with Philipp Kellmeyer and Oliver Müller from the Saltus! Group Responsible Artificial Intelligence, I will develop guidelines that ideally allow unbiased questioning of patients that are or have been treated with neurotechnological devices. In conversation with those patients, I strive to gain insight how they experience their sense of agency, agency being a person‘s ability to act and take ownership of ones thoughts and actions. Those insights will then be used for the development of a communication tool (a question prompt list or QPL) that research participants and patients can use to understand and discuss potential agency effects of neural devices during the informed consent process.

The methodological background for the aspired interview guidelines will be provided by phenomenology, a philosophical method whose emergence in the early 20th century and subsequent multiple and far-reaching reception in continental philosophy is increasingly shaping – among others - anthropological reflections of medical practice.

Phenomenological approaches to interviewing employ open-ended questioning to help interviewees closely attend to their lived experience, develop a way of articulating that experience, and then reflect on the meaning of that experience. Phenomenologically-based interview methods do not predetermine categories of analysis or frames for experience, and are well-suited to studies which aim to capture salient features of lived experience that require some effort to uncover and articulate.