Supervisors
Supervisors provide guidance, constructive feedback, and oversight, as well as career advice and professional support, to help doctoral researchers successfully complete their projects.
Faculty members eligible to supervise or co-supervise dissertations in our doctoral programme are listed below. Prospective researchers should review each faculty member’s research areas and profile, and initiate contact by email with a brief research proposal (up to 500 words), unless otherwise indicated.
Kurt Appel
Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of History, Eschatology, Utopia and the Question of God; Philosophy of Religion; Hegel and German Idealism; Postmodern Structuralism and Critique of Knowledge
Research Profile
Arno Böhler
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Indian Philosophy, European History of Philosophy (Deconstruction, Poststructuralism), Aesthetics
Research Profile
Mark Coeckelbergh
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Technology, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Research Profile
Christian Damböck
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Science and the Humanities, Descriptive Psychology, Moral Non-Cogntivism, Philosophy of Logic
Research Profile
Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch
Karl Landsteiner Privatuniversität für Gesundheitswissenschaften Krems
Supervision Areas: History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind, Methodologies of Empirical Research (First-Person Methodologies in Health Sciences, Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis), Applied Ethics
Research Profile
Herwig Grimm
Messerli Research Institute
Supervision Areas: Applied Animal Ethics, Ethics of Farm Animal Welfare, Veterinary Ethics, Pragmatism in Applied Ethics, Orientation Towards Practice in Ethics, Methods of Problem-Oriented and Applied Moral Philosophy
Research Profile
Caroline Heinrich
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Social Philosophy and Philosophy of Power, Communication and Discourse, Moral and Political Philosophy, Didactics and Methodology of Philosophy and Ethics
Research Profile
Esther Heinrich
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Religion (Hebrew Bible, Simone Weil), Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Philosophy of Mathematics and Logics, History of Analytic Philosophy (Wittgenstein, Peirce)
Research Profile
Richard Heinrich
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: History of Philosophy (Kant, Wittgenstein), Aesthetics, Theoretical Philosophy
Research Profile
Narzissa Helfritzsch
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Social Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Queer Theory, Aesthetics
Research Profile
Angela Kallhoff
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Climate Ethics
Research Profile
Georg Karamanolis
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Ancient Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Philosophy of Late Antiquity and Byzantine philosophy
Research Profile
Tarja Knuuttila
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Modelling and Representation
Research Profile
Max Kölbel
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Meta-Ethics
Research Profile
Katharina Kraus
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: History of philosophy of European Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries) and modernity (19th
and 20th centuries), Kant's transcendental philosophy and its Reception in German idealism, Women
Philosophers in the German Speaking Tradition (19th and 20th centuries), Philosophy of Life and Phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
Research Profile
Martin Kusch
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy, History and Sociology of Science, Philosophy of Psychology and Social Science, Epistemology and Social Epistemology, Philosophy of Language (Davidson, Kripke, Wittgenstein)
Research Profile
Andrea Loettgers
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Science, Modeling Practices in Biology and Physics, Philosophy of Biology
Research Profile
Arne Moritz
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Didactics and Methodology of Teaching Ethics and Philosophy, History of Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy
Research Profile
Giuseppe Motta
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: History of Modern Philosophy, Transcendental Philosophy, Aesthetics, Kantian Ethics and Political Theory
Research Profile
Elisabeth Nemeth
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: History and Philosophy of Science, Logical Empiricism (Neurath, Zilsel, Frank), Cassirer's Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Culture, Bourdieu's Sociology of Science and Education
Research Profile
Franz-Markus Peschl
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Innovation and Knowledge Creation, Cognitive Science, Organisational Theory, Enabling Spaces
Research Profile
Felix Pinkert
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Philosophy and Economics
Research Profile
Gerald Posselt
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Political and Social Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Poststructuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Butler)
Research Profile
Donata Romizi
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: History of Philosophy of Science, Didactics of Philosophy, Philosophical Practice
Research Profile
Johann Schelkshorn
Department of Intercultural Philosophy of Religion
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Religion, Intercultural Philosophy (Latin American Philosophy), Ethics & Political Philosophy, Theories of Modernity
Research Profile
Georg Schiemer
Department of Philosophy, Institute Vienna Circle
Supervision Areas: History and Philosophy of Mathematics, Early Analytic Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic
Research Profile
Hans Bernhard Schmid
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality, Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Social and Political Philosophy
Research Profile
Michael Schmitz
Central European University
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language, Collective Intentionality and Social Ontology, Practical Reasoning
Research Profile
Benjamin Schnieder
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Logic, History of Analytic Philosophy
Research Information
Daniel Sharp
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Political Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Social Philosophy, African American Philosophy
Research Profile
Mona Singer
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy and Cultural Studies of Science and Technology, Feminist Theory and Epistemology, Philosophy of Culture as Political Philosophy, Postcolonial and Race Critical Theories
Research Profile
Paulina Sliwa
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Moral philosophy, Moral Psychology, Meta-Ethics, Feminist Philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind
Research Profile
Friedrich Stadler
Department of Philosophy, Institute Vienna Circle
Supervision Areas: History and Philosophy of Science, Intellectual History and Exile Studies, History, Theory, and Methods of Cultural Studies
Research Profile
Michael Staudigl
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Philosophy of Religion, Phenomenology, Religion, Violence and Fundamentalism, Ethics and Political Philosophy
Research Profile
Georg Stenger
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: 20th Century and Contemporary Philosophy, Cultural and Intercultural Philosophy and Anthropology, Poststrucutralism, Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Language
Reserch Profile
Violetta Waibel
Department of Philosophy
Supervision Areas: Theoretical Philosophy (Metaphysics, Knowledge, Subjectivity, Space and Time), European and Continental Philosophy, History of Philosophy (Kant and German Idealism), Aesthetics
Research Profile
On supervising and being supervised
FAQ
Staff of the University of Vienna with full rights to supervise doctoral theses in the field of philosophy according to §15(2) of the Satzung, and persons habilitated in philosophy with a venia docendi in philosophy at the University of Vienna (UG §103).
The VDP encourages co-supervision. In addition to the primary supervisor, a co-supervisor may support the dissertation project. While particularly beneficial for interdisciplinary research, co-supervision may also be requested to obtain complementary expert feedback.
Doctoral researchers may request a co-supervisor on the recommendation of their primary supervisor or on their own initiative. This should first be discussed with the primary supervisor. The co-supervisor may be a member of the Department of Philosophy, a professor from another discipline at the University of Vienna, or an external academic. Any internal or external co-supervisor must meet the supervision requirements of the University of Vienna.
Once a potential co-supervisor has been identified, the doctoral researcher should contact them directly to request supervision.
If the co-supervisor agrees, the researcher must re-submit the form SL.D11, keeping the details of the primary supervisor and adding the co-supervisor’s information to formalise the arrangement. The form should be sent to the SCC Philosophy Service Desk – Doktorat and to vd.philosophy@univie.ac.at.
For questions, please contact the VDP office.
VDTR recommends and supports the establishment of Thesis Advisory Committees (TACs) to regularly review the research project, assess progress, and provide advice to both the doctoral student and their supervisor(s). Please visit our advisory boards entry.
The VDTR’s supervision standards are articulated in the University of Vienna’s key principles for good doctoral supervision. They define supervision as a trust-based, respectful partnership oriented toward academic excellence, grounded in honesty, care, and awareness of institutional policies. Supervisors are expected to revisit goals, celebrate milestones, provide practical guidance on academic and non-academic careers, and inspire a passion for research. Recognizing the diversity of doctoral contexts (funded/unfunded, individual/group projects, fieldwork), the standards call for flexible, context-sensitive approaches across different supervision models (single supervision, co-supervision, with or without TACs).