Biography

My primary areas of competence are legal, social, and political philosophy. While I consider my work to belong to the tradition of analytical philosophy in methodological terms, my primary substantive interest at the moment is to explore the relevance of the views of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt for contemporary debates in legal and political theory. Throughout the next year, I plan to work on Kelsen’s and Schmitt’s theories of sovereignty and to draw out the implications of these views for current debates about the legitimacy of international law.
In addition to my systematic interests in political philosophy, I have scholarly ambitions in the history of political thought, and in particular in the history of early modern political thought.
I obtained my Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (Department of Philosophy) in spring 2006 with a thesis on Legality and Legitimacy in Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law that was supervised by Prof. David Dyzenhaus.
I have been a course instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and a Connaught Fellow in the University of Toronto’s School of Graduate Studies. I held a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto throughout the academic year 2005-2006. Before going to Toronto, I worked as a researcher and instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bamberg, Germany. In addition to my philosophical training, I hold an M.A. in Medieval and Modern History from the University of Heidelberg.