About

I am a Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Philosophy Department of Humboldt University in Berlin, where I also did my PhD. Before I returned to Humboldt, I taught at Rice University in Houston. During my PhD, I also spent one year at Yale University in New Haven. In January and February 2020, I was a Visiting Researcher at Groningen University. I was recently awarded a Career Development Award from the Berlin University Alliance, which allowed me to be on leave during the winter term 2021/22 and focus on a project on Hume's political philosophy. I am an Associate Fellow at the Human Abilities Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and a member of the New Voices Center on Women in the History of Philosophy.

My research focuses on early modern philosophy. It is primarily concerned with the metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind of this era. More recently, though, I have started to be interested in early modern social and political philosophy as well. My work deals with figures such as Marsilio Ficino, Bernardino Telesio, Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Anne Conway, John Locke, Margaret Cavendish, George Berkeley, David Hume, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Immanuel Kant. I have written a book on Leibniz's metaphysics of modality (the book, entitled Leibniz' Metaphysik der Modalität, is based on my dissertation and came out in 2016 with De Gruyter). Right now, I am working, among other things, on papers dealing with Conway's metaphysics, Hume's political philosophy, and Kant's 'possibility proof' for the existence of God. I am also working on a book manuscript about early modern theories of causation (the working title is Causation and Containment. An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics).

When I am not doing philosophy, I enjoy playing the piano, cooking, and playing chess (recently, I also got interested in chess composition). Most of the time, though, I am chasing around my two-year old on his scooter.

Find me on PhilPeople and at Humboldt.


NEWS

  • My paper "Descartes's Argument for Modal Voluntarism" got accepted for publication by Inquiry.

  • My paper "Localizing Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason - Leibniz on the Modal Status of the PSR" is out now.

  • My paper "Anne Conway's Metaphysics of Change" is out now.

  • My (German) paper "Hume und der Liberalismus" ("Hume and Liberalism") got accepted for publication by Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie.

  • My paper "Localizing Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason - Leibniz on the Modal Status of the PSR" got accepted for publication by the Journal of Modern Philosophy.

  • I'll give a talk entitled "Kant's Possibility Proof and the Principle of Complete Determination" at GAP.11 in Berlin in September 2022.

  • My paper "Hume's Deep Anti-Contractarianism" is out now.

  • My paper "Anne Conway's Metaphysics of Change" got accepted for publication by History of Philosophy Quarterly.

  • I'll give a talk entitled "Was Anne Conway a Monist?" at the Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy in Edinburgh in April 2022.

  • My paper "Hume's Deep Anti-Contractarianism" got accepted for publication by Hume Studies.

  • I have been awarded a "Career Development Award" by the Berlin University Alliance and will be on leave during the winter term 2021/22.

  • My paper "Spinoza on the Essences of Singular Things" got accepted for publication by Ergo.