About

I am an Assistant Professor (a tenure track "Juniorprofessor") at the Philosophy Department of University of Göttingen. Before coming to Göttingen, I held positions at Humboldt University in Berlin (where I also did my PhD) and at Rice University in Houston. While I was working on my dissertation, I also spent one year at Yale University in New Haven. I am an Associate Researcher 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 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, Malebranche's account of causation, Spinoza's account of essence and persistence, 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 five-year old on his bike.

Find me on PhilPeople and at Göttingen.

NEWS

In late September, I'll present my paper "Is Anne Conway a Monist?" at the ESEMP conference at FernUniversität Hagen.
In early September, I'll present my paper "The Pre-Critical Kant and the Threat of Spinozism" at the GAP.12 at the University of Düsseldorf.
On March 25, 2025, I'll give a talk entitled "No Cognition, No Power. Reevaluating the ‘No Knowledge Argument’ in Early Modern Occasionalism" at Cognitive and Conative Powers - A Conference in Honour of Dominik Perler at University of Basel. (I am also one of the co-organizers of the conference.)
On February 10, 2025, I'll give a talk entitled "Spinoza on Essence and Persistence" at the workshop Spinoza on Power and Essence at the Human Abilities Center for Advanced Studies (at Humboldt University), organized by Dominik Perler and Leonardo Moauro. [link]
My (German) blog post "Kant und der Rationalismus" ("Kant and Rationalism") is now available at prae|faktisch. [link]
My (German) blog post "Philosophinnen der Frühen Neuzeit in der akademischen Lehre" ("Early Modern Women Philosophers in Academic Teaching") is now available at LehrGut. [link]

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