Andreas Oberprantacher

Principal Investigator/Professor of Practical Philosophy

Having grown up around a variety of borders (especially national and linguistic, but also social borders), it comes as no surprise that over the years of my academic education and interest in philosophy I started to specialize in the philosophical research of borders as dispositifs of distinction but also as sites of contestation and as chances of rethinking relations. As a philosopher by profession that still thinks that philosophy should retain its “amatorial” passion, I am strongly inclined toward ways of thinking that are informed by phenomenology, genealogy and, lately, metaphorology, but also by area studies ranging from critical border studies to human–animal studies. Apart from teaching interrelated philosophical subjects such as political and social philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of art or philosophy of media and technology, I am also involved in the field of peace and conflict studies, where, over the past few years, I had the opportunity to be a Visiting Professor in different world regions. In the context of the research project Membership Metaphors as “Doorkeepers,” it is my aim to reframe some of the philosophical discourses on migration and refugees by developing a metaphorological perspective on the lines of argumentation used. And besides that, I am also very much interested in advancing metaphorology as a philosophical research method.