I am Associate Professor of Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the director of the Research Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies.

Principal topics of my research and teaching are politics of religion and religious diversity in the public sphere; freedom of religion; tolerance; citizenship; (challenges to) democratic politics and society; environmental ethics and climate change; philosophy, religion, and social theory in the Anthropocene; and relationships between humans and non-human nature in cosmologies in the past, present, and future.

I work in an interdisciplinary tradition, combining philosophical reasoning with historical perspectives, and social scientific approaches. 

I studied theology and chemistry at the University of Tübingen (Germany) where I received my PhD in 2004 with a specialization on social and political ethics. 
2001-2004 I worked as academic coordinator of the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen.

I joined Utrecht University in 2004 where I am Associate Professor of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

In 2008-2009 I was research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies NIAS. 
From 2009 until 2016 I was director of the Research Institute for Theology and Religious Studies (INTEGON) and the Research Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies (OFR). 
Since September 2022 I am again the director of the Research Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies (OFR). 

September 2019–August 2020 I held a EU-COFUND-Fellowship at the Max-Weber-Kolleg for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in Erfurt.

I co-initiated (together with Christian Lange and Birgit Meyer) and coordinated the Research Master Programme Religious Studies, as well as Utrecht University's research focus area Migration and Societal Change (2019-2022; together with Ilse van Liempt, Marcel Lubbers, and Dina Siegel).