Michael P. Schlaile

I'm a postdoc at the department of innovation economics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. Prior to my current position, I gained professional experience as a foreign currency trader and consultant at a local savings bank and was part of the scientific staff at University of Hohenheim’s department of business ethics.My research revolves around responsibility and the interplay of cultural and economic evolution in complex socio-economic systems. I'm particularly interested in exploring (and ideally contributing to changing) the paradigms underlying the modes of production and consumption that have led the global society to the edge of collapse. The guiding assumption of my investigations is that a transformation towards socially desirable goals such as sustainability can only be achieved if the required technological and institutional change is aligned with the overall cultural evolution, which includes the evolution of corresponding value systems and institutions for collective action. I consider myself to be a network weaver and boundary spanner between both people and theories. For example, in my recent book "Memetics and Evolutionary Economics: To Boldly Go Where no Meme has Gone Before" (published 2021 with Springer), I develop an approach I call “economemetics”, which is a combination of meme theory and complexity theory that has the potential to combat the fragmentation of evolutionary economics while re-connecting the field with cultural evolutionary theory. I've completed my Prosocial facilitator training during Summer 2020 with the intention of applying the Prosocial process both in my research and as a field-tested method for bringing about positive change in groups.