[13] She is the founder of the European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP)[14] and in 2009 was a co-founder of Participedia, a global collaborative wiki platform for democratic innovations.

[citation needed] Her doctoral thesis, on the European public sphere, was published in 2006 (examiners: Philippe C. Schmitter, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Sabel, Peter Wagner).

Nanz’s main areas of research are the European integration, democratic innovations, collaborative government and public participation, and sustainability transformations (climate change, biotechnology, energy transition, long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste).

Between 2005 and 2009, Nanz led the German research project “Giving New Subjects a Voice: Migrants, Organizations and Integration into the Health Care System”.

[21] Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the project sought to develop innovative approaches that would make the policy process and institutional settings of the health care system more responsive to the needs of migrants.

[26] To strengthen Franco-German cooperation and promote mutual understanding between the two countries, French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the Aachen Treaty in January 2019.

[28] As part of an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany, Nanz has also been involved in a project concerning the phase-out of coal in the German region of Lusatia.

[29] The interdisciplinary research group is concerned with the conflicts and opportunities for democratic and sustainable structural change, taking into account historical and political circumstances as well as the inclusion of the people in the region.

The platform, which operates independently, applies a transdisciplinary approach in its work and is a key part of the new architecture supporting the implementation of the German Sustainable Development Strategy 2021.

These bodies are of a consultative/advisory nature, and the adoption of their findings requires the approval of a democratically elected local council or parliament at the state or national level.

Nanz also argues that, government needs to become more collaborative to ensure the responsible uptake of citizens’ ideas and suggestions and to prevent participatory frustration.

Furthermore, they outline how the totality of consultative bodies (municipal, national, and Europe-wide) could form a fourth power and complement representative parliamentary democracy.

Instead, she believes, priority must be given to efforts to strengthen the credibility of democracy as a form of governance; for instance, by enabling citizens and policymakers to develop and assume responsibility for goals that can only be achieved over the longer term.

[36][37] As a (partial) solution, Nanz calls for future decision-makers in Europe to be trained in such a way that they can make ethically sustainable decisions that integrate multiple forms of knowledge.

and the IASS, funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, have accompanied ten German mayors (local councils and administrations) in participation processes.