Hello, I am Dan.

Researcher / Developer / Somewhere between Science and Art

I’m into humanities with a background in software development, loving lasagne and having an utterly bad sense of humor. I prefer to keep learning, continue challenging myself, and do interesting things that matter. 

My natural curiosity drives me to pursue many interests, hobbies and creative endeavors. I’m a fast learner, able to pick up new skills and juggle different projects and tasks with relative ease. I have a passion for everything that blinks and overcomes gravity, yet I like to develop expertise in a number of areas over the course of my life and work.

I’m a teamplayer with a strong sense for general awareness and empathy, able to inspire and at my best when I’m sharing my thoughts with others in a team of open minded people.

I’m Professor for Educational Theory and Practices of Critical Computational Literacy at the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C³S) at Goethe-University Frankfurt where I bring together teaching in educational digital studies with interdisciplinary research on the societal challenges of digital data, code, and computational systems. I regularly publish my findings and give talks on these topics.

From 2018 to 2022, I worked on education in the digital world at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, then continued my research at Bielefeld University from 2022 to 2025, before a brief appointment at Technical University Berlin. Earlier, I was a research assistant with Winfried Marotzki, where I completed my PhD on education and the public sphere in digital transformation. Alongside, from 2004 to 2016, I worked as a full stack developer on systems such as osCommerce and Magento, focusing on secure infrastructures, and integrations with CRM/ERP systems like KaDIS.

It is always important to me to see the social aspects of our digital world not as opposed to technology, but as intertwined with it.

Verständig, D. (2024). Programmieren mit Copilot. Über Grenzen der Automatisierung und Formen von Subjektivierung. In H. Bajohr & M. Krajewski (Eds.), Quellcodekritik. Zur Philologie von Algorithmen (1st ed., pp. 127–151). August Verlag. doi.org/10.52438/avaa1004

Verständig, D. (2023). Vom Prinzip der Universalität zur Unberechenbarkeit des Sozialen. In S. Aßmann & N. Ricken (Eds.), Bildung und Digitalität. Analysen – Diskurse – Perspektiven. Springer. 385–402. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30766-0_14

Verständig, D. (2021). Critical Data Studies and Data Science in Higher Education: An interdisciplinary and explorative approach towards a critical data literacy. Seminar.net, 17(2). doi.org/10.7577/seminar.4397

Verständig, D. (2020). Nothing to see? – How to address algorithms and their impact on the perception of the world. In: Kergel, D.; Heidkamp, B.; Arnett C. R. & Mancino, S. (Eds.), Communication and Learning in an Age of Digital Transformation. Routledge. 220–237.

⸺ For a full list of my publications, please visit my ORCID profile.

Beauty and the Biased: How Content Regulation on TikTok Diminishes Diversity and What Media Education Can Do About It. Paper presented at the ECER 2023, Glasgow, Scotland. 25^th September 2023.

Executing Education: On coding literacy and digital media cultures. From Rechnerkunde to Digitalkunde – Talks on K-12 Computing Education Philosophy. Heinz Nixdorf Forum, Paderborn, Germany. 5^thOctober 2022. 

Coding as Creative-Aesthetical and Political Expression. Erasmus+ Exchange and Collab with MCT at NTNU Trondheim, Norway. 10^th December 2019.

What the hack? – Fostering diversity through tinkering with algorithms and digital tools. Paper presented at the ECER 2018. Network 13: Philosophy of Education. Bolzano, Italy. 4^th September 2018.

The CGI represents some older work being created with Maxon Cinema 4D and Blender. The generative art is the result of work with TouchDesigner and Processing. The source code of the generative art can be found on my GitHub or OpenProcessing.

pixelspace.org has been around for more than 25 years now. Originally founded by Sebastian, the goal at that time was to present and exchange digital works and to promote inspiration of all kinds. After many different attempts, we have now arrived at a time when you don’t actually have to host your own portfolio and the exchange of information can be easily arranged via countless services.

This page is part of the story of a friendship and therefore has a high symbolic value. Even if many things have changed over time—or perhaps precisely because of this—it is particularly important to me to continue the original idea of this site.

There is also another important aspect: only on your own webspace can you experience a largely unrestricted freedom of action and a sense of autonomy. In addition, it cannot be wrong to have a backup of all data on your own hard drive. I am referring to a fundamental principle of the IndieWeb, whose idea I find particularly important against the background of recent developments around the social web and commercial interactions.