I'm a PhD student in philosophy at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. My PhD Project is concerned with the intersection of embodiment, emotions, empathy and dehumanization. I investigate how the social categories we perceive when we perceive another person can predispose us to certain forms of (in this case: racist) discrimination, commonly known as dehumanization. Social-psychological research shows that dehumanizing person perception (i.e., subtle or blatant forms of denial of another person’s ‘humanness’) impedes or biases our empathic abilities and skews our perception of other people. Therefore, it affects our tendencies of mind …
I'm a PhD student in philosophy at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. My PhD Project is concerned with the intersection of embodiment, emotions, empathy and dehumanization. I investigate how the social categories we perceive when we perceive another person can predispose us to certain forms of (in this case: racist) discrimination, commonly known as dehumanization. Social-psychological research shows that dehumanizing person perception (i.e., subtle or blatant forms of denial of another person’s ‘humanness’) impedes or biases our empathic abilities and skews our perception of other people. Therefore, it affects our tendencies of mind ascription/attribution (mentalizing). This, in turn, can mean that we not only perceive certain others (e.g. outgroups) as less agential beings, but also that we exclude them from the realm to which our morally responsible actions refer.
Therefore, my main interests are in: Embodiment/4E Cognition, social "affordances", Empathy, Social Psychology, and the Philosophy of Race.
Also: Together with my collaborators (Dr. Leda Berio and Dr. Daniel James) I am working on the participatory X-Phi project "Rasse – Negotiating a Fraught German Term" funded by the Citizens' University Düsseldorf (https://das-r-wort.com/). The aim of the project is twofold: First, to offer a comparative empirical analysis of conceptions of race in the United States and Germany in light of current theories of the ordinary concept of race. Second, to determine whether the goals of anti-racist social movements in Germany call for ameliorating ‘Rasse’ or even eliminating it altogether. We will pursue both aims in close cooperation with anti-racist organisations who act as stakeholders for the project.
Further interests are in:
- the philosophy of Michel Foucault
- the social psychology of social inequalities
- moral psychology
- intersectionality
