I work as a postdoctoral researcher in political theory at the SOCIUM at the University of Bremen. I studied philosophy, mathematics and cognitive science in Freiburg before doing my PhD in philosophy at Frankfurt University. My research falls roughly into four categories: Firstly, I analyse the history and problematic of responsibility from a critical perspective. This research lead to my book Im Bann der Verantwortung (The Spell of Responsibility). Secondly, I work on Michel Foucault. The concept of critique is a third topic of my research. Finally, my habilitation project is about the effectiveness of knowledge.
You can find further information in my CV or on my Academia.edu profile.
PhD in Philosophy, 2013
University Frankfurt/Main
MA in Philosophy, Mathematics and Cognitive Science, 2009
University of Freiburg im Breisgau
Website Michel Foucault's Philosophy Concepts of Critique Effective Knowledge
PDF Publisher's website Responsibility Michel Foucault's Philosophy Concepts of Critique
The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, a monumental three-volume set edited by Beverley Best, Werner Bonefeld and Chris O’Kane, has just appeared – containing my chapter on common features of the ‘stature’ of Foucault’s, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s model of critique.
We, the editors of the Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur, have written a short article for the blog praefaktisch. In it, we report about the aims, obstacles and joy of running an open-access online journal.
Martin Nonhoff and I are organising the spring conferecne of the DVPW-Section Political Theory and History of Ideas in March 2019. The conference topic (and title) is »Democracy and Truth«. You can find the call for papers by clicking on »Read more« or download it as a PDF. Both are in German, though, as this will be the conference language.
I have writen a small teaser for my book The Spell of Responsibility on the RLI blog. Read it on https://www.rowmaninternational.com/blog/against-responsibility/.
How does knowledge affect us? What political significance do epistemological questions and insights have? My habilitation project investigates the force of knowledge
How do we picture the activity of criticising, and how does this influence our theoretical activity of explicating the concept of critique? What kind of knowledge do we produce in criticising? And what is the relation between critique and necessity?
Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur is a peer-reviewed open-access online journal for book reviews in scholarly philosophy.
The book series Philosophie & Kritik. Beiträge zur politischen Philosophie und Kritischen Theorie will start in 2017 with Springer VS. It publishes books which understand themselves as politically engaged philosophy.
From a systematic perspective I am especially interested in Michel Foucault’s methodology and the resulting conception of (political) philosophy as well as his attempts to write a non-relativistic ‘History of Truth’.
That we should behave and act responsibly seems to be a self-evident norm hardly questioned by anyone. Yet, historically speaking, this is fairly new – only 200 years ago, »responsibility« was a rather marginal legal concept with no ethical significance. So what does the surprising career of »responsibility« mean, both for our thinking and our acting? What happens when »responsibility« becomes a required self-understanding for individuals at the workplace, in the welfare state or in the criminal justice system? And what are the consequences when philosophy’s analyses of »responsibility« focus almost exclusively on conditions of agency mostly absent in non-philosophical practices?
I teach regularly in political theory both in the BA and MA Political Science. In addition, I hold demand-tailored seminars for the BIGSSS. In the summer term 2018 I will teach two seminars (both in German):
Writing papers is the most important form of examinations in political theory seminars - yet (scientific) writing is not an easy task. o help you with the writing part and to give you some idea how to find a good research question for your paper, I have assembled some tips in the Hausarbeiten-Survival Guide - so far only in German.
If you are instead looking for answers how to format your paper, you should first read the so-called Compendium (so far there only is a German version). It specifies details like the font size, the cover page (which you can download as a .docx-file), the citation style (the StugA Politik has some advice, and there is an output style for Zotero), Plagiarism etc. You can find a proper word template kindly published by the students of the StugA Politik.