Building on several years of experience in international cooperation and policy advice, especially in Africa and Western Asia, I currently am a doctoral candidate and research how models and model-based scenarios can be used responsibly for science-informed policy-making. Focusing on the field of energy planning and climate policy, I am particularly interested in how individual actors with their respective worldviews and resources shape model and scenario design, how stakeholder participation can increase the range of perspectives that are reflected in modelling results, and how value-laden assumptions and uncertainties can be communicated more transparently to decision-makers and other scenario users.