While the moral status of non-human animals has become an established area of societal and academic debate in the Anglo-American sphere, it is hardly a topic at German universities. Thus, during my first semester, with the aim of putting animals on the intellectual agenda at Heidelberg University, I gathered an interdisciplinary team of students dedicated to pioneering ethical perspectives on animals through academic research, public lectures, and publication. We formed a working group called Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgemeinschaft Tierethik at the Department of Philosophy in June 2005, as whose president I served from its inception to July 2007. Our most important project was an interdisciplinary lecture series on animal rights (2006). Renowned scholars from several countries including Tom Regan, Carl Cohen and Eugen Drewermann spoke at this comprehensive lecture series that I initiated and, to my knowledge, was the first one ever dedicated to the moral status of non-human animals in Germany. The lecture series culminated in a book titled Tierrechte - Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung that, I hope, contributed to thoughtful public and academic debate in the German-speaking world about how we ought to treat animals. Animal ethics has been a central philosophical interest of mine ever since. Questions about the moral status of non-human animals like "Do they have rights?" or "To what extent do moral agents have moral obligations towards them?" continue to occasion passionate conflicts within me. However, given the fact that (some) animals have rich subjective lives that matter to them, it appears common-sensical to me that justice requires us to radically rethink our behaviour towards those who we eat, wear, experiment on and use for entertainment.

On a non-scholarly level I am concerned with poverty and children’s rights as an executive director of the American-German Society of Friends of the Children's Village Haluaghat in Bangladesh. Located in South Asia, Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations in the world with a GDP per capita of about 525 USD (2009). Furthermore, the country suffers from corruption and over-population. One of the most vulnerable and unprotected groups within this vast population is the street children whose number, according to a government estimate, is about 380,000, of which 55% live in the capital Dhaka. It is expected that the number of children without minimum shelter and care will cross the mark of 930,000 by the year 2014. Some of the major immediate threats these children face are physical and sexual abuse by the adults from within their close social environment, harassment by the security officials, insufficient or no access to education and lack of steady income. I am convinced that the key to a better future for these children is proper education. Only if they have an understanding of the world and learn to take care of themselves do they have a chance to a secure and independent life. Facing these circumstances, some friends and I took action and started to work with our now partner organization Ekmattra that is building a village for street children in Haluaghat, located about 170 km north of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka. It will provide former street children with shelter, medical assistance and basic education.

In philosophy, I'm further interested in the Gettier Problem and subsequently proposed alternatives to the traditional justified true belief account of knowledge such as Alvin I. Goldman’s Causal Theory of Knowing and Robert Nozick’s Truth-Tracking Theory and regularly catch myself pondering about the concepts of ethics and their nature: Is ethics objective? Are there moral facts? If so, how do we learn about them? Do (some) ethical statements express propositions? If so, are some of these propositions true? Are there genuine moral dilemmas?

You are welcome to contact me if you share my interests in any manner.