The University of Manitoba campuses and research spaces are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Dene and Inuit, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, R3T 2N2
Faculty of Arts
Department of Philosophy
465 University College
220 Dysart Road
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2M8
I am a Professor at the Department of Philosophy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Prior to arriving in 2011, I taught and did research at Freie Universität Berlin as well as University of Europe for Applied Sciences, Berlin (then BTK). – Before switching to academia, I studied professionally the concert piano at HMTMH (Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover).
Research-wise, my specializations include the relationship between epistemology and aesthetics, philosophy of music, philosophy of creativity, the arts with regard to knowledge and truth, and concepts of cognition and rationality in non-propositional media. Further research and teaching interests include the relation between continental and analytic philosophy, media studies, and philosophy of film.
I published two authored monographs on the relationship between epistemology and aesthetics, co-edited three edited volumes, and authored roughly 40 book chapters and journal articles: topics include epistemology, general theories of symbols, aesthetics, philosophy of music, film studies, media theory, picture theory, rhythm- and time-theories, non-propositional cognition, New Music, analyses of contemporary composers, and topics in meta-philosophy.
Additional research stations: Visiting researcher at Department of Philosophy, University of California Berkeley; Visiting researcher at the Cohn-Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Senior research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest, Hungary (Collegium Budapest, IAS).
The guiding questions of my research include: What are the diverse ways of acquiring and articulating knowledge? What roles do the arts play in this, and how do sciences and arts differ and relate to one another in pursuing cognition and ‘truth’? What consequences do philosophical analyses of creativity in the sciences and arts have for concepts of ‘rationality’ and ‘thinking'? This question includes the relation between epistemology and aesthetics via analyzing language, forms of reference and the structures of different symbol systems in general, as addressed for instance by Wittgenstein, Nelson Goodman, and others. Methodologically, I wish to combine the virtues of both continental and analytic philosophy. I am further interested in the history of philosophy under systematic aspects: with an emphasis on authors such as Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre, Carnap, Langer, Goodman, and others. I further specialized in the philosophy of music, including the meta-philosophical consequences of this field.
In 2021, I founded the UMIH Interdisciplinary Research Cluster 'Death as Transformative Experience'. It had fifteen members from nine disciplines and five different institutions (four universities). It ran during the academic year 2021-22 and is currently paused. See past events here:
