My paper-based PhD explore the knowledge-policy interface, based on a case study of occupational health regulation in German slaughterhouses during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the role of trade unions in shaping these policies. Through an interdisciplinary dialogue between medical humanities, feminist science and technology studies (STS), and legal scholarship, I analyse the rationalities, dynamics, and challenges of knowledge production and knowledge translation in contexts of structural precarity. Beyond the specific case study on slaughterhouses, the overarching goal of my research is to critically explore how intersectionally marginalised populations can effectively produce and utilise knowledge to achieve democratic participation.

In my first paper (Occupational Health in Slaughterhouses in Germany: Translating Political Claims into Legal Language During the COVID-19 Pandemic), I examine how political demands for occupational health regulation in slaughterhouses were translated into legal language, emphasising the role of knowledge translation as a hermeneutic concept for analysing social transformation. In my second paper (Precarity-Based Evidence: Trade Unions’ Knowledge Production on Migrant Workers’ Occupational Health in Slaughterhouses in Germany), I analyse how structural precarity compels highly instrumental, fragmented, and non-systematic knowledge production, which I conceptualise as precarity-based evidence (PBE). My third and final paper (working title: The Known Unknowns of Precarity: Navigating Uncertainty in Occupational Health in Slaughterhouses in Germany) analyses uncertainty as a central aspect of precarity-based evidence. The aim of this paper is to create a framework for civil society to address uncertainty in the context of profound social-ecological crises.