Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISIDr. Nils B. Heyen is a sociologist and has been a Senior Researcher and Project Manager in the Competence Center Emerging Technologies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe since 2011. Since 2020, he has been the institute’s Coordinator for the cross-cutting topic of Technology Assessment. From 2023 to 2025, he is also Deputy Professor for Socio-Economic Innovation Design at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences.
From 1999 to 2005, Nils Heyen studied Sociology and Psychology at the Universities of Bielefeld, Hanover (both Germany) and Edmonton (Canada). After half a year of voluntary work in South Africa, he did his postgraduate studies at the Institute of Science and Technology Studies (IWT) at Bielefeld University. There, he was part of the DFG-Research Training Group »Entering the Knowledge Society: Science in Applied and Advisory Contexts« and the PhD-Programme »Biomedicine: Patterns of Interpretation and Social Practice«. In 2011, he received his PhD in Sociology from Bielefeld University and completed a full-time training as Peace and Conflict Consultant at the Academy for Conflict Transformation at the Forum Civil Peace Service in Bonn (Germany) and Skopje (North Macedonia). In 2022, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Digital Economy Unit of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra (Italy) and at the Post-Growth Innovation Lab of the University of Vigo in Pontevedra (Spain).