About

Professor of political and social theory, as well as Political Bioethics, also political Artificial Intelligence, informed by philosophy, political science and sociology. Teaches at the University of Texas at Austin but also in Germany (Frankfurt/Oder), Japan (Tokyo Gaidai, Hokkaido), China (Beiwai, Tsinghua), Austria (Linz, Innsbruck), Sweden (Lund), and Brazil (Goiãnia). Studied with Michael Walzer in Princeton, Axel Honneth in Berlin, and Seyla Benhabib at Yale. Author of << Thick Moralities, Thin Politics [Duke Univ Press]>> (public policy suffers when politics are laden with moral doctrines, and should work not toward consensus but toward the more realistic goal of mutual accommodation); << Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms [SUNY Press] >> (while moral validity is relative rather than absolute, and cultural meanings local rather than universal, social integration and democratic politics are still attainable goals); << Human Rights as Social Construction [Cambridge Univ Press] >> (human rights can be authored by the ordinary people to whom they are addressed, and they are valid only if embraced by those to whom they would apply); and << The Human Rights State [Univ of Pennsylvania Press] >> (a social movement conceived as a metaphorical alternative to the nation state, as a polity without territory, standing alongside the nation state, as a political and moral commitment that, in the pursuit of human rights, would limit national sovereignty without undermining it). In 2022 Cambridge University Press published << Creating Human Nature: The Political Challenges of Genetic Engineering >>; it develops a new approach: “political bioethics”. Has presented aspects of this project at invited lectures in the USA, Europe, Asia, and South America. 2016: Fulbright Professor, University of Linz, Austria. 2018: visiting professor at Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics as well as the Ethox Centre (Nuffield Dept of Population Health), both University of Oxford. 2019 Visiting Researcher at le Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire (Université de Paris) and at the Danish Institute for Human Rights (Copenhagen). 2021-22 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Public International Law at Lund University in Sweden. 2022 Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore. 2023 Visiting Researcher, Centre for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. As of 2023: International Lecturer (Bioethics) in the Faculty of Medicine, Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Indonesia.

Research Interests

Asia, Europe (Central and Eastern), China, Civil Society, Comparative Politics, Democracy, Democratisation, Development, Elites, Ethnic Conflict, European Politics, European Union, Globalisation, Governance, Human Rights, International Relations, National Identity, Political Economy, Political Participation, Political Theory, Regulation, Social Justice, Social Movements, Social Policy, USA, Welfare State, Knowledge, Political Sociology, Constructivism, Critical Theory, Freedom, Identity, Internet, Jurisprudence, Ethics, Liberalism, Normative Theory, Political Ideology, Political Regime, Technology, Big Data, Empirical, Political Cultures, Theoretical

Current/Upcoming Events

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Standing Groups and Research Networks

• International Political Theory
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Human Rights and Transitional Justice
• Methods of Normative Political Theory