I’m an assistant professor (akademischer Rat) for philosophy at the University of Bielefeld, where I’m part of the research group in theoretical philosophy. Since October 2024, I’m also PI of the DFG-funded project The Philosophy of Linguistic Interventions (POLI). Before coming to Bielefeld, I was a doctoral student in the EXTRA group at Ruhr University Bochum, where I defended my Ph.D. thesis in June 2021. I got a BA and an MA in philosophy and history from Humboldt University Berlin, and an M.Litt in philosophy from St Andrews/Stirling.

My areas of specialization are mostly in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of psychology, in metaphilosophy, and experimental philosophy. A lot of my research revolves around descriptive as well as normative aspects of language. Here are some of the questions I find most interesting:

• Why do words have the meanings they do?
• Would it sometimes be better if they had different meanings, and if so, what can we do to change them?
• What is the relation between language and thought?
• To what extent is or should philosophy be concerned with critically assessing and changing the meanings of our words and concepts?

To answer these questions, I help myself to both traditional philosophical as well as experimental methods. More recently, I have started working on the philosophy of race and the philosophy of new digital technologies, including AI and virtual reality.

I am an associated member of the CRC Linguistic Creativity in Communication, a network member of Conceptual Engineering and Communicative Disruptions: between Semantics and Pragmatics (CECODISP), a member of the GAP and the Aristotelian Society.

I am a section editor of the journal Experimental Philosophy, and I edit the category ‘conceptual engineering‘ on philpapers.

I am on philpeople and on googlescholar. You find my University website here.

You find my CV here.

News

Books: “New Perspectives on Conceptual Engineering,” a three volumed series co-edited with Manuel Gustavo Isaac and Kevin Scharp is not out with Synthese Library: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3.

Book: “Methods in Analytic Philosophy: A Primer and Guide,” co-edited with Joachim Horvath and Michael G. Titelbaum, is now published open access with Philpapers Foundation.

Paper: “Folk concepts of race, cross-culturally,” co-authored with Leda Berio, Daniel James, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, and Alex Wiegmann, is now published open access in Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Blog post: I wrote a blogpost for praefaktisch about Trump, language, and the left. You can find it here.