Daniel Herfurth

Daniel Herfurth has been working on his doctoral thesis at the Chair of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Seibel since April 2020. He studied Politics and Public Administration at the department and completed semesters abroad at Berne University in Switzerland and at the Free University of Bolzano in Italy. He gained practical experience with public institutions of the federal and the state government body as well as with private sector consultants for public services. In academia, Daniel is regularly invited to the European Rail Forum of the European University Institute (EUI) at Florence, Italy. In the context of the UN Paris Agreement, he developed an alternative tool to evaluate emission-reduction technologies on an effectiveness basis for the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Nature Protection (BMU). He was awarded the “Dr.-Horst-Körner-Preis” for his Master's Thesis which acknowledges academic work on sustainability of public action.

Daniel's dissertation focuses on public transport: He analyses the impact of diverging administrative structures and strategies on service quality of short-distance rail services – a branch which had to face major administrative reforms in Germany since the 1990ies but was yet only covered from the viewpoint of civil engineering. With his thesis, he undertakes an interdisciplinary attempt to uncover “The Logic of Politic in the Technical Sphere” (working title). He is supported by the Andrea von Braun Foundation.