Research
Some of my current research interests:
In Philosophy of Religion: religious experience and emotion; understanding and the religious imagination; contemporary intersections of science and religion; decolonizing POR; religious pluralism, interreligious disagreement and dialogue; civil religion and secular transformations of the sacred; God, gender, and sexuality; theodicy, suffering, and concerns of epistemic and restorative justice; political dimensions of mystical theology; religious concepts of naturalness and theologies of nature; theological fictionalism; religion and reproductive loss
In the History of Philosophy: expanding, pluralizing, and decolonizing the historical philosophical canon; continuities between medieval and early modern philosophy; the epistemological legacy of medieval devotional and confessional literature; late medieval love and wisdom mysticism; classical Islamic philosophy and Sufi thought; medieval virtue ethics; medieval and early modern women thinkers; embodied cognition and devotional textuality in 14th-15th c. German female monastic and lay communities; 19th-20th c. existentialist approaches to self-deception and authenticity
In Practical and Social Philosophy: the ethics of public encounter and discourse; motivated irrationality, epistemic vice, and the role of the will; epistemic (in)justice and the social imagination; the moral and agential implications of transformative experience; identity, multiplicity, and questions surrounding the desirability of integrity/self-integration; imagination, fiction, and narrative ethics; the relationship between self- and other-deception; compassion and other-centered emotions; imaginative resonance and intercultural engagement; shame, guilt, and trauma; AI ethics; AI and bullshit; the metaphysics and ethics of pregnancy and reproductive loss
In Philosophy of Sport: sport and value; sport and gender; sport, religion, and play; philosophy of officiating and jurisprudence in sport; counterfactuals in sport; superstition, sports, and irrationality; naturalness arguments in sports contexts - and also, what the heck is a "football move"?
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH & RESEARCH STAYS
Ongoing Collaborations
Member of Research Network: "The Future of Philosophy of Religion" (PIs: Sebastian Gäb, LMU Munich; Georg Gasser, University of Augsburg)
Affiliated Member of Research Project: "Suspension of Belief" (PIs: Verena Wagner, University of Konstanz; Alexandra Zinke, University of Freiburg)
Collaborator in International Research Team: "Extending New Narratives in the History of Philosophy" (PI: Lisa Shapiro, Simon Fraser University)
Member of International Research Team: "Love in Religion" (Regent's Park College, University of Oxford + The Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought; PI: Paul Fiddes, Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture)
Member of Research Collaboration: "International Network for Experimental Philosophy and Theology" (various institutions)
Member of Research and Teaching Initiative: "Creative Pedagogy Project" (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; project leaders: Josh Edelman, Julia Boll)
Previous Collaborations
Residential Fellow, Center for Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame, USA)
Co-Investigator of Subproject in Proposed Interdisciplinary Research Center: "Transformations of the Sacred" (University of Paderborn, DE)
Participant, Philosophical Research Group: "Transforming Encounters"; leaders: Anné Verhoef & Justin Sands (North-West University Potchefstroom, ZA); incl. 6-week research stay in South Africa in Mar-Apr 2017
Participant, International Research Collaboration: "Personhood, Virtue and Moral Cultivation: A Christian-Muslim Programme"; PIs: Jochen Schmidt (University of Paderborn, DE) & Mohsen Javadi (University of Qom, IR)
Contributor, International Research Project: "Special Divine Action"; Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Oxford University; PI: Andrew Pinsent (University of Oxford, UK)
Internal Research Fellow, Interdisciplinary Research Group: "Religious Minorities"; Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz; leader: Dorothea Weltecke (University of Konstanz, DE)
Principal Investigator, International Research Partnership: "Longing, Suffering, and Love in Medieval Christian and Islamic Mysticism"; co-PI: Mohammad Sadegh Zahedi (Imam Khomeini International University, IR); incl. 6-week research stay in Iran, Sep-Oct 2015
Principal Investigator, Analytic Theology Cluster Group: "The Role of Emotion in Religious Experience: Philosophical and Theological Approaches"; co-PIs: Roderich Barth (University of Gießen, DE) & Scott O’Leary (University of St. Mary, USA)
Member, Interdisciplinary Research Initiative: "Truth and Subjectivity"; PIs: Bernhard Kleeberg & Robert Suter (University of Konstanz, DE)