Prof. Dr. Matthias Braun

Professor for Social Ethics

Since winter semester 2022/23, Matthias Braun has been Professor of Systematic Theology / Ethics at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Bonn.

PI SFB 1483 EmpkinS

Since September 2021, a team of engineers, physicians, ethicists, sports scientists and psychologists is conducting research together as part of a collaborative research center funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Visiting Scholar

Matthias Braun is a visiting scholar at Oxford University and a research fellow at Maastricht University.

Short Bio

2016: PhD (summa cum laude)
Since 2021: Head of a junior research group at the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg
2021: Research Fellow at the University of Maastricht, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Since 2021: Principal Investigator SFB 1483 (EmpkinS)
Since 2022: Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Since winter semester 2022/23: Full professor for social ethics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn

Research Focus

Ethics of artificial intelligence
Ethics of emerging technologies (in particular: synthetic biology, genome editing, stem cell research)
Political ethics (democracy, rule of law, civil society)
Recognition and vulnerability as topics of (theological) ethics
Solidarity and Justice
Ethics of psychological deviance

Publications

Get an overview of Matthias Braun's current publications.

Get to know Matthias

Matthias Braun heads the Department of (Social) Ethics.

After studying biology and Protestant theology, he initially worked as a research assistant at Philipps University of Marburg, conducted research as part of the `MaxSynBio` excellence project jointly funded by the Max Planck Society and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and was a Research Fellow at the University of Bergen, Maastricht University and at the University of Oxford. Until September 2022, he led the junior research group "Ethics and Governance of New Technologies" at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. In his doctoral thesis, Matthias Braun dealt with social-anthropological and theological-ethical issues in dealing with psychological deviance. In this work, he developed a model of intersubjective recognition that simultaneously takes into account the fundamental vulnerability of human beings and asks for concrete possibilities to shape existing structures and ways of existence. His work has received several awards (DFG, Staedtler Foundation) and has been published by Mohr-Siebeck.

Matthias Braun's research addresses questions of political ethics (the relationship between democracy, civil society and the rule of law) as well as the ethical and governance challenges of new technologies (in particular: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Genome Editing). Matthias Braun has published numerous articles in high-impact scientific journals and has been invited to give numerous national and international lectures and talks. In addition, he is Principal Investigator in the Collaborative Research Center "EmpkinS", funded by the German Research Foundation, as well as leader of several other research projects.