Doctoral Researchers

Scroll down to find out about the current doctoral researchers of the Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy. Alumni are listed here.

Supervised by Arno Böhler

Eva-Maria Aigner is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, and DOC-fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She is currently working on her PhD project "Surviving Derrida/ Derrida Überleben" on the notion of "survivance" in deconstruction, especially Derrida. Her research interests include deconstruction, contemporary French thought, Derrida studies, feminist deconstruction and theory, poststructuralism, philosophy of literature and writing. 

Supervised by Felix Pinkert and Paulina Sliwa

Sebastian is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the PACE project. Sebastian has an academic background in economics and has studied Philosophy & Economics at the University of Vienna. In his PhD research project, he explores the moral worth of group actions. Collective ethics is predominantly focused on collectives’ or group agents’ responsibility with respect to harmful outcomes such as climate change. We very often blame groups for their deeds, but are there also instances where they deserve praise? When do group actions have moral worth? The concept of moral worth is typically linked to the motivating reasons of an agent which is why also the issue of group motivating reasons is of interest.

Besides his academic studies, Sebastian also works as a sports commentator for various national TV stations in Austria. Thus, he has a genuine interest in the philosophy of sport. His Master’s Thesis “Collective Emotions, Relational Goods and Profit” has a special focus on the commercialization of professional football. 

Mark Nader Basafa

Supervised by Christian Damböck

Mark's research project explores the genesis of Kuhn's conception of scientific progress in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions against the backdrop of historicism in France and Germany. He is particularly interested in the landscape and the ideas advanced on scientific philosophy by German and French neo-Kantians during the first half of the 20th century.

Supervised by Johann Schelkshorn

Leonhard Bauer studied Philosophy and Theology in Vienna, his research focuses on the subjects of normativity, argumentation, and justification. With his doctoral dissertation, "Beyond Justification/Jenseits von Rechtfertigung" he aims to deepen our understanding of the nature of justification and moral judgment from both practical and epistemological points of view. Using an analytical approach to the semantics of justification, he proposes a new perspective on the issue of final justification and radical skepticism. He is co-founder of the online platform "Systematische Offenheit" and the "Paul Feyerabend Gesellschaft."

Philipp Leon Bauer

Supervised by Friedrich Stadler

Philipp Leon Bauer, BA MA has studied philosophy with particular interest and specialisation in history of science and philosophy of science at the University of Vienna and University of Leipzig. Bauer is writing his doctoral thesis on Ernst Mach's concept of thought economy and the influence towards the Vienna Circle. In the scope of his doctoral thesis, close cooperation with Prof. Ingolf Max at the University of Leipzig has been established.  

Supervised by Hans Bernhard Schmid and Herwig Grimm

As part of the 'Forms of Normativity - Transitions and Intersections' (FoNTI) scheme, Jessica D. Bicking's dissertation project explores the conditions of interdisciplinary research into (normative) mind-phenomena. Here, she is looking at work done on social cognition in individuals on the autism spectrum as a case, and as a basis for discussing the potential that phenomenological concepts may hold for a science of cognition.

Michael Boch

Supervised by Kurt Appel, in close collaboration with Alexander Schnell (University of Wuppertal)

Michael Boch studied philosophy, history and educational sciences in Münster. In 2020 he obtained an MA in philosophy with a thesis about Martin Heidegger's theory of space and orientation. Boch is writing his doctoral thesis about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's idea of a transcendental logic of knowledge and its reception by Herrmann Krings. He is CEO of the archive for Post-Neokantanism and contemporary criticial idealism at the University Wuppertal.

Okwuegbu Bartholomew Chidi

Supervised by Michael Staudigl and Delia Belleri

Okwuegbu Bartholomew Chidi did his masters degree in philosophy at the University of Vienna (2021) focusing on gender and race theories. For his doctoral studies, he is narrowing his research scope to the theory of race within the areas of phenomenology and analytic philosophy. His research interest is to contribute a broad-based, coherent and balanced understanding of “Race” as well as engender a better understanding of its operative mode in the different spheres of the society.

Cristina Chițu

Supervised by Arno Böhler and George Karamanolis

In Cristina's research project, Return of the Eternal Return... and More: A Systematization of the Concept of Cyclic Time Drawing on Ancient Inspiration, the concept of cyclic time is explored by drawing insights from ancient philosophies, specifically early Stoicism, the philosophies of Śruti, and those of early Smṛti. The project's main hypothesis reads: By analyzing these ancient philosophies, as well as the scholarship associated with them, one can obtain a systematization of the various meanings more commonly associated with the term "cyclic time," and thereby identify four logically possible cyclic time structures. The main hypothesis, then, concerns the philosophy of time and its history. But in the course of substantiating it, two further theses concerning the history of philosophy arise: (a) The early Stoics assume a cyclic cosmos, but not cyclic time; (b) Both the Śruti and the early Smṛti contain the idea of cyclic time, but these two sets of sacred texts exhibit two different cyclic time structures.

Ivana Covic

Supervised by Arno Böhler

In Ivana’s research, central points of interest revolve around bringing together art, bioethics and philosophy of mind (biopoetics), with focus on the mind-body problem, role of artistic research in knowledge acquisition, bioethics of artificial intelligence and animal ethics.

Supervised by Angela Kallhoff

Maike Cram studied philosophy in Berlin before settling in Vienna, where she now focuses on the concept of human dignity from a phenomenological perspective. Her PhD project aims to enrich our idea of human dignity by analysing the structure of experiencing self-respect. From this perspective, self-respect will be analysed as existential feeling on the one hand and as posture, with special emphasis on how social and political dimensions shape our sense of dignity, on the other hand. 

Supervised by Martin Kusch

Chiara Dankl studied philosophy, political science and ethics in Salzburg and Vienna and is now a PhD researcher at the department of philosophy. She also studies psychotherapy science at the Sigmund Freud University, Vienna and is a psychotherapist in training under supervision. Her master’s thesis explored depression in relation to contemporary forms of power and as a type of modern subjectivation. Her doctoral research focusses more broadly on mental illnesses in relation to power structures and normativity and on the epistemic limits of thinking about oneself in psychological terms.

Supervised by Max Kölbel and Esther Ramharter

Felix Danowski started his PhD in 2018, as a member of the FWF funded project 'Forms of Normativity - Transitions and Intersections' (FoNTI). His dissertation focuses on Metaethical Non-cognitivism and its implications for Moral Epistemology. Accordingly, his topics of interest are mainly Metaethics, Epistemology, and Action Theory. Since 2018, he is also a member of the Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy (WFAP). 

Konstantin Deininger

Supervised by Herwig Grimm

Konstantin studied at LMU Munich and the Munich School of Philosophy. He is a guest researcher at the Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, since October 2020. His research focuses on the problems of human-animal interactions and concepts that play a crucial role in it, such as the notion of the fellow creature. Methodologically, Konstantin is located in Wittgensteinian ethics as championed by Cora Diamond, who defends a practice-oriented moral philosophy.

Wolfgang Deutsch-Pernsteiner

Supervised by Mona Singer

Wolfgang Deutsch-Pernsteiner is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna and a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His dissertation project, "The Poverty of Our Technosocial Freedom/Die Armut unserer technosozialen Freiheit", aims at re-actualizing Critical Theory in the light of climate change. He revisits a central argument of Critical Theory, articulated in the works of Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, according to which the entanglement of technologies with relations of domination suppresses the flourishing of meaningful human relations to the world and the realization of the emancipatory potentials that technological developments hold. For these conditions he coins the term "techno-pathologies". 

Arianna Dini

Supervised by Mark Coeckelbergh

Arianna Dini is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, and the Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium (FINO). Her project, "The Political Economy of Algorithmic Pricing" explores the ethical problems arising within consumer-to-platform internet commerce, and aims to propose regulatory solutions. Her research interests include theories of property, just price theory, marginalism, market freedom, exploitation, privacy, and internet regulation. 

Bishakha Dutta

Supervised by George Karamanolis

Bishakha Dutta is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. She is currently working on a PhD project that studies the economic concepts laid out by Cicero in his work De Officiis vis-à-vis the views of the Stoics on private property. Bishakha Dutta has a strong interest in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, History of Philosophy and the Ancient languages - Ancient Greek and Latin. 

Supervised by Max Kölbel

Triinu Eesmaa started her PhD in 2018 and works on philosophy of language. Her PhD research focuses on context-sensitivity and vagueness. In her dissertation, she deals with the question how to accommodate underdetermination involved in language use within semantic and pragmatic theories.

Maria Fedorova

Supervised by Max Kölbel and Anne Sophie Meincke

Maria is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the PACE project. She obtained her masters degree in philosophy from the Central European University with the focus on epistemology and philosophy of mind. Maria's doctoral project examines the epistemic value of imagination. On the dominant view, imagination is epistemically significant insofar as it justifies some of our beliefs. In contrast, the central question of Maria’s dissertation is whether imagistic thought may result in cognitively significant epistemic achievements which are not merely instrumental or reducible to propositional knowledge. Presently, Maria works on the ways in which imagination can contribute to understanding.

Supervised by Max Kölbel and Hans Bernhard Schmid

Tom's research is on epistemology and the ethics of beliefs. He is part of the FWF funded project 'Forms of Normativity - Transitions and Intersections' (FoNTI). He is interested in how evidential and non-evidential considerations interact when it comes to the question of what one ought to believe.

Stephan Fock

Supervised by Georg Stenger and Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch

Stephan Fock is a psychoanalyst, PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna, and scientific staff member of the Department of Psychology & Psychodynamics, Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, Krems. His thesis investigates psychoanalytic object relations theory from a perspective of philosophy of science, in particular its basic concepts like self and object representation, and their relations to philosophical and empirical theories of subjective experience and embodiment.

Supervised by Mark Coeckelbergh and Mark H. Bickhard

As part of the FoNTI Project, Arzu’s research is on ethics of social interaction with robots from a cognitive scientific perspective. More information about her research and academic roles can be found here and here.

Supervised by Benjamin Schnieder and Paulina Sliwa 

Fu Yaokun is a member of the PACE project and a PhD researcher at the University of Vienna. Before settling in Vienna, he completed his master's degree in philosophy at Wuhan University. He has a keen interest in metaphysics and the epistemology of modality. His current project explores the connection between essence and modality, focusing on the question "How could essence metaphysically explain modality?" Yaokun is also enthusiastic about the philosophy of language and meta-metaphysics, and he welcomes discussions on a wide range of topics.

Lukas Geiszler

Supervised by Mona Singer

Lukas Geiszler studied philosophy, German and history at the University of Vienna. After completing his MA. in philosophy with a thesis on the figure of the machine in the philosophy of René Descartes, he is currently working on a PhD. project on the interactions and consequences of sedimented notions of nature and technology as employed in recent discussions of the Anthropocene.

Supervised by Arno Böhler

Ralf Gisinger is a DOC-Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and works at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, with a PhD-thesis on philosophy of nature and ecology in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as contemporary discourses on ecology. His main research interests include political/social philosophy, poststructuralism, materialism(s), critical theory. He recently finished a project on philosophies of pluralization (“Philosophien der Pluralisierung”).

Paul Gragl

Supervised by Violetta Waibel

Paul Gragl started his PhD in philosophy at the University of Vienna in 2019, focusing on Kant's philosophy of law and its significance for today's relationship between law and politics. His research focuses on the law of reason and the reason of law; their significance for understanding freedom and human rights; the triangular relationship between freedom, the positive law, and politics; and how these concepts translate into a modern constitutional republican-democratic concept of the State.

Pia-Zoe Hahne

Supervised by Mark Coeckelbergh

Pia is researcher on digital humanism at the FH des BFI Wien. Pia-Zoe's project "'Trust the Machine?': Conceptualising Trust in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence" focuses on the influence of emerging technologies, in particular generative AI, on the trust relationships necessary for functioning democratic institutions. Her work combines conceptual reflections on trust and its relationship to societal change with ethnographic interview data to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Henriikka Hannula

Supervised by Martin Kusch

Henriikka Hannula works on the history of late 19th-century German philosophy. In her dissertation, she is researching the concepts of historicism, naturalism and Lebensphilosophie in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. Besides that, her interests lie in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of history, and hermeneutics. 

Georg Harfensteller

Supervised by Georg Stenger

Georg Harfensteller is interested in embodied, performative and pre-reflexive forms of communitarisation and the resulting shared agency. He tries to develop a social-phenomenological approach to religious and political gatherings as a starting point for a descriptive analysis of group formation beyond the mediated content. The experience of the self and other, the structure and prerequisites of interaction, as well as shared pathos and response, are the cornerstones of the analysis. 

Supervised by Georg Schiemer and Tarja Knuuttila

Sebastian is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the PACE project. Sebastian obtained a PhD degree in physics at the University of Vienna, where he worked on various topics in the foundations of quantum mechanics and in quantum information theory. During his work in physics, his interest in philosophy grew steadily, which lead him to the decision to steer his academic trajectory and pursue a PhD in philosophy. In his current doctoral project, he is planning to investigate whether logic should be influenced by natural and social scientific research, or whether it should be pursued independently of the latter. 

Supervised by Donata Romizi, Tamara Katschnig and Maria Tulis-Oswald

Andreas Höller is creating an interdisciplinary approach for the Philosophy for/with children (P4wC) movement. It attempts to add new perspectives to the main questions in the P4wC discourse: first, can P4wC actually be called philosophy?; second, do children have the cognitive abilities to engage in philosophical discourse? Furthermore, the comparability of scientific studies on the issue is complicated by the diversity of various P4wC concepts. Using his interdisciplinary Polylogical Process model of (Elementary-)Philosophical Education (PPEE) as a linking model could lead into a better comparability of international studies by paving the way for more constructive criticism in the long run.

Supervised by Arno Böhler

Eva Jägle writes her PhD about Deleuze's thinking on other philosophers in the context of his film-books. The research is inspired by her interdisciplinary interest in art and its possibilities of expression. Her dissertation will follow Deleuze into his cinematographic vision of other thoughts.

Roman Jordan

Supervised by Christian Damböck

Roman Otto Jordan's main area of interest is the field of philosophy of science ­— in his doctoral thesis he investigates the theories of science of Wolfgang Stegmüller and Paul Lorenzen. He has also been interested in the evolutionary epistemology of Rupert Riedl and the philosophy of physics of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. He was also project worker to Christian Damböck at the Institute Vienna Circle for FWF projects about the diaries of Rudolf Carnap.

Wenzhen Jin

Supervised by George Karamanolis and Derong Pan

Wenzhen Jin was born and raised in Shanghai. She is currently conducting a doctoral project in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Her research focuses on dialectical argument and persuasion, with a special emphasis on Aristotle's notion of pistis. In her dissertation, she is articulating a comparison between Aristotle's views on rhetoric and those of Han Fei, a key figure in Chinese philosophy (c. 280-233 BC).

Nikolina Kamzola

Supervised by George Karamanolis

Nikolina Kamzola studied classics (BA), philosophy (MSc) and Science-Technology-Society (MSc) at the University of Athens, Greece. Her PhD project aims to investigate the Epicurean views on language, specifically on the origin of language as well as on sense and meaning. Her research will bring pieces of ancient sources together, reconstruct the puzzle and connect this topic with contemporary theories of language.

Kanau Kobayashi

Supervised by Georg Stenger

Kanau Kobayashi studied Philosophy, Anthropology and Literature in Tokyo and in Freiburg. His PhD project focuses on the psychoanalytic approach to the foundational moment of the law and the institution. Especially based on Pierre Legendre’s work of dogmatic anthropology, he tries to sharpen the aesthetic, performative and unconscious dimension of the law through its subject-constituting function.

Supervised by Tarja Knuuttila

Rami Koskinen is working on his PhD on modalities in synthetic biology as part of the ERC group Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology. Besides modal reasoning, he is interested in general philosophy of science, philosophy of biology and logic. Before coming to Vienna, Koskinen studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Helsinki.

Supervised by Tarja Knuuttila.

Moritz Kriegleder is a cognitive scientist and physicist interested in computational models of consciousness. In his PhD project, he studies how current mathematical theories of cognition such as predictive processing and free energy try to explain qualities of subjective experience. His interests are philosophy of scientific modeling, phenomenology, and embodied cognition.

Supervised by Hans Bernhard Schmid

Odin Kröger has been studying philosophy in Vienna, Berlin, Canberra, and Boston. He mainly works on social metaphysics, the philosophy of the social sciences, and critical theory, but he also has a soft spot for formal theories. His PhD is about what it is for us to reify our social order.

Supervised by Angela Kallhoff

Eva Liedauer works as an assistant at the Chair of Ethics and Applied Ethics. After completing her MA with a thesis on Hannah Arendt's account of judgment, she is pursuing a PhD on the tensions between political action and the social in Arendt's work. Eva aims to revisit Arendt's critique of modernity in the light of theories of money. In addition to her research interests in money and politics, Eva is also keenly interested in environmental philosophy and ethics. 

Xiao Li

Supervised by Benjamin Schnieder

Li Xiao is interested in metaphysics and the philosophy of language. His research project explores the nature of structures by investigating their theoretical roles and recommends a metaphysical picture of them that explains their general features. He is also interested in a wide range of topics like mereology, intrinsicality, modality, grounding, meta-ontological deflationism, aboutness, negation, and Kant’s philosophy.

Erich Linder

Supervised by Herwig Grimm

Erich Linder studied in Padova, Berlin, Milan and is currently guest researcher at the Messerli Research Institute. Drawing from pragmatism and phenomenology his research focuses on the problem of injustice in utilitarianism applied within the context of animal research.

Boda Liu

Supervised by Michael Staudigl

Boda Liu completed his Bachelor's and Master's studies in China, focusing on Husserl’s phenomenology. For his doctoral research, he aims to provide a critical interpretation of the relationship between the pure ego and the body in Husserl’s works. As the founder of phenomenology, Husserl considers the body an essential factor of transcendental/constituting consciousness. However, Husserl also maintains that the pure ego, as the ultimate subject, exists without the body. Liu’s research intends to demonstrate the inherent tension in Husserl’s descriptions of the pure ego and the body, arguing that the notion of a subject without a body is problematic. Additionally, his work seeks to offer a deeper understanding of the intellectual connections between Husserl and other phenomenologists.

Supervised by Martin Kusch

Flora Löffelmann's research encompasses ideas from both queer phenomenology and social/ political epistemology. In their PhD thesis, they focus on how epistemic injustice is experienced at a first-personal, phenomenal level, and highlight the potential for action and agency that arises from being a body "out of place". 

Rojin Mazouji

Supervised by Violetta Waibel

Previously working on ethics and philosophy of religion in Kant and Kierkegaard, currently Rojin Mazouji is working on the philosophy of Fichte and self-knowledge. The next project concentrates on the concept of embodiment in German Idealism and how this discussion reflects some central issues in the debate of gender inequality and feminism.

Supervised by Georg Schiemer

Sofia Abelha is a predoctoral researcher and member of the ERC-Project "The Formal Turn - The Emergence of Formalism in Twentieth-Century Thought". Her primary research interests are in the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of science, particularly focusing on comparing the methodology and epistemology of logic with other sciences from a practical and historically informed perspective.

Madeleine Müller

Supervised by Felix Pinkert

Madeleine’s research is focused on the phenomena of moral enhancement, moral bioenhancement and AI enhancement. She is particularly interested in exploring the question of whether individuals have a moral duty towards society to improve themselves morally. Madeleine holds a degree in law and has studied philosophy both at the University of Vienna and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. In addition to her academic studies, Madeleine works as a researcher and consultant in the fields of digital human rights and AI ethics.  

Hafiz Muhammad Hammad Mushtaq

Supervised by Mona Singer

Hammad Mushtaq's research is focused on the critical evaluation of the narratives at work in the debates about the companion robots, in the tradition of philosophy of technology. The variables he is working with include the politics of relation-ing - in terms of love, friendship, and companionship - among the terrestrials, technological solutionism and the activity of Terra, and the relationship between technology and evolution.

Eusebius Nkwagu

Supervised by Michael Staudigl

Eusebius Nkwagu did his Masters in Philosophy at the University of Vienna and is writing his doctoral thesis on how Emmanuel Levinas' ethical phenomenology of the other can be translated into our concrete relations with the other and may be capable of awakening a sense of responsibility where these relations indulge in reciprocal inauthenticity, indifference, or morally petrified normative social orders.

Nianzu Tu

Supervised by Hans Bernhard Schmid

Nianzu Tu is a doctoral candidate sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China. His research focuses on social philosophy and phenomenology, with a keen interest in aesthetics and German philosophy. His research project deals with the phenomenological interpretation of social ontology, especially the relationship between self-identification and social recognition. For him, the aim of philosophy is to sustain a humble inquiry into the mysteries of nature and to consistently contemplate what constitutes a life worth living.

Supervised by Georg Schiemer

Patrick Pradler is a PhDcandidate working in the philosophy of mathematics. His dissertation explores a broadly Kantian notion of synthesis and examines whether a synthetic view of mathematics can contribute to current and long-standing debates in the philosophy of mathematics.

Supervised by Erik Vogt

Ralph Pöchtrager studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and received his MA with a thesis on causality in Marxist Critical Theory and Critical Realism. In his dissertation, he works on the theoretical and conceptual framework of historical materialist critical theory with the aim of clarifying its concepts for a better understanding of capitalist societies. With a problem-oriented approach to recent developments in capitalist societies, the dissertation focuses on understanding their sociality, their logic of social and material reproduction, and their historical-political transformations. This is done by taking into account the theories of historical materialism and of capitalism. His research interests include materialist philosophies, especially of the 19th and 20th centuries, social ontology and philosophy of science, as well as Marxist critical social theory and theories and histories of capitalism. He also has a soft spot for classical modern German philosophy, especially Hegel. 

Björn Puhr

Supervised by Michael Staudigl and Jocelyn Benoist

Björn Puhr studied contemporary philosophy in Vienna and Paris and developed an expertise in phenomenology and aesthetics during his two master's degrees at the Sorbonne. While in the first he attempted an ethical reading of the épochè within the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka, in the second he explored the concept of silence from a musicological and philosophical point of view. It thus served as preliminary research for his doctoral project, in which he investigates the phenomenon of silence in relation to the experience of time. 

Supervised by Kurt Walter Zeidler

Lois Marie Rendl's main research interests are transcendental logic and idealism. From 2015 to 2019 (with interruptions) he was research assistant to Christian Damböck at the Institute Vienna Circle (FWF project: edition of the diaries of Rudolf Carnap 1908-1935). The topic of his PhD project (to be submitted in autumn 2021) is "Idealism and Logic of Science. The Transcendental Interpretation of Aristotelian Syllogistics by Charles S. Peirce, Hegel and Hermann Cohen".  

Supervised by Hans Bernhard Schmid

Leah Ritterfeld, holding a background in psychology, incorporates her expertise with philosophy in her research. While previously focusing on conspiracy theories, her current scholarly pursuits delve into the concept of 'ressentiment.' Her doctoral thesis examines its cognitive and affective dimensions, employing the 'incel' community as a key case study.

Supervised by Martin Kusch

Sonja Riegler's research interests focus on social, feminist and political epistemology, particularly in relation to theories of epistemic oppression. In her thesis, she investigates causes for and effects of forms of ignorance on epistemic communities. She puts special emphasis on the repressive epistemic and political dimension of ignorance and aims to provide strategies to counteract harmful instances of ignorance.  

Irene M. Salzmann

Supervised by Martin Kusch and Dietlind Hüchtker

Irene M. Salzmann's research focuses on social/political epistemology and history of ideas. In her PhD project she adopts a a queer-feminist and post-marxist approach into works of the Konservative Revolution with a special interest in their leitmotif of nature.

Supervised by Angela Kallhoff and Felix Pinkert

Jackson Sawatzky’s research occurs at the intersection of social contract theory, normative ethics, and (especially) the history of philosophical thought. By applying the techniques of analytic philosophy to contemporary variants of social contract theory, his doctoral dissertation asserts a contract-theoretical understanding of systemic oppression and social injustice.

Philipp Schaller

Supervised by Violetta Waibel

Philipp Schaller is working in his thesis on the rivalry that is taking place between reasoning and story-telling over the precedence in founding morals and in establishing a moral attitude in human beings. He is focusing on the works of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller and Fyodor Dostoevsky, following the line of reception linking these three authors.

Michael Schmidt

Supervised by Giuseppe Motta

Michael Schmidt studied Psychology and Philosophy in Graz. In 2023, he earned his Master’s degree in Philosophy with a thesis on 18th-century philosophical aesthetics, which was published under the title "Die Ästhetik Karl Leonhard Reinholds: Transzendentalphilosophische Geschmackskritik vor Kant." In addition to his interest in certain thinkers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, his research encompasses both theoretical (epistemology and metaphysics) and practical philosophy (ethics and aesthetics) of the late Early Modern Period, with a particular emphasis on Kant and post-Kantian idealism.  In his PhD project, "Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Transcendental-Voluntarist Event-Causal Compatibilism: A Kantian Perspective on the Contemporary Free Will Debate," he explores the historical context of Reinhold’s theory of free will (including, among others, Leibniz, Wolff, Crusius, Kant, Rehberg, Schmid, Heydenreich, Fichte, Schiller) and applies Reinhold’s theory to the contemporary analytic discussions on free will, with particular attention to responsibility and imputability. 

Moritz Schwab

Supervised by Violetta Waibel

Supervised by George Karamanolis

Thomas Seissl is a fellow of the uni:docs programme and member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Currently, he is working on his dissertation project exploring the reception of Aristotle's account of time in Physics IV.10-14 in late antiquity. Thomas Seissl has strong interests in Ancient natural philosophy, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. 

Supervised by Martin Kusch and Michael Staudigl

Manu Sharma is a PhD Researcher at the University of Vienna. Before this, they completed their M.A. in Philosophy from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Their research concerns itself with modernity and the ways modernity (mis)reads the phenomenon of suffering. As philosophical practice, they work on texts, archives that remain buried under hegemonic epistemic erasure and approaches them deconstructively to say some things about suffering in modernity, or modernity’s (in)ability to understand, confront and address certain forms of suffering. While much of their literature comes from post-colonial landscapes, they methodologically work at the intersections of critical phenomenology, post-structuralism and de-colonial theory to investigate the phenomenon of suffering. They find much joy in indulging in art, literature, poetry, music and the like.

Supervised by Richard Heinrich

Mira Magdalena Sickinger's project “The Pragmatics of Deep Jokes” explores “depth” as an attribute that can be ascribed to certain philosophical problems as well as certain jokes. It reviews Wittgenstein’s description of “deep jokes” and seeks to provide a definition for this particular type of joke, which is not primarily aimed at amusement but displays communicative dysfunctionalities or misinterpretations of (and by) language. The investigation discusses how jokes violate traditional maxims of successful communication and analyses the pragmatic particularities that apply to deep jokes.

Daniel Smyth

Supervised by Sandra Lehmann

Daniel Smyth studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research and at Brock University. His MA thesis defended the idea that human rights exist in degrees. His dissertation explores the formation of common beliefs about institutions, focusing on organizational agency and the perception of institutions as simple organizations. Combining insights from medieval studies and the sociology of institutions, he traces historical shifts in the ontologies of intermediate corporate entities: from medieval guilds to contemporary institutions.

Supervised by Richard Heinrich

Michael Toppel is working on his PhD on the use of geometry in the metaphysics and magical theory of Marsilio Ficino in comparison to the scholastics. Besides medieval natural philosophy, he is interested in proof theory, syntactical theory reconstruction, medieval logic and general philosophy of logic. Before starting his PhD in Vienna, he studied mathematics, logic and philosophy of science in Vienna and Leeds. He already has a PhD in mathematical logic from the University of Leeds.

Supervised by Angela Kallhoff

In her PhD-thesis, Lisa Tragbar investigates the international responsibility for peacekeeping in the ius post bellum. She approaches the subject based on Francisco de Vitoria's considerations of international law. Her research interests lie in Political Philosophy and Applied Ethics, in particular Just War Theory and Peace Ethics.

Supervised by Hans Bernhard Schmid, Georg Stenger, and Violetta Waibel

Florian Uckmann studied philosophy, sociology and aesthetics in Jena and Frankfurt/Main before starting his PhD within the 'Forms of Normativity: Transitions and Intersections‘ scheme. The main focus of his research lies in the fields of anthropology, social philosophy and the ontology of society with particular interest in social institutions, second nature and the theoretical foundations of liberalism.

Supervised by Angela Kallhoff

Anna Wieder studied philosophy and journalism in Vienna, Graz, and Paris VIII. Her PhD-thesis investigates the relation of democracy and political resistance. Accordingly, her research areas are ethics, social and political philosophy, esp. the theory of democracy, which she encounters from the theoretical background of critical theory, post-structuralism, and phenomenology.

Supervised by Benjamin Schnieder and Max Kölbel

Peihong is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the PACE project. His academic interest covers nearly all aspects of metaphysics, but especially focuses on grounding, philosophy of time, personal identity and causal powers. His PhD project is devoted to developing, within the perspective of conceptual engineering, a way to assess and modify metaphysical grounding as an important conceptual tool, and then to implement the engineered concept of grounding in first-order philosophical debates, for example, over causal powers.

Supervised by Max Kölbel and Paulina Sliwa

Bojin is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the PACE project. Bojin previously completed his BA and MPhil at University of Cambridge. His research lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind, of language, and of science. His current focus is on the topic of conceptual engineering. Here's a link to his website, where you can find out more about his philosophical interests, publications, and various other things he writes: zubergine.com.