About
I am an academic philosopher. I work at the crossroads of three philosophical sub-disciplines: philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and aesthetics. I am interested in creativity, imagination, fiction, olfaction, value theory, and the experience of, and many relations to, what we eat and drink.
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva as part of the SNF Prima project "Creativity, Imagination, and Tradition" lead by Julia Langkau. Previously, I was an adjunct lecturer at University of Fribourg, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luzern, a FNS postdoctoral researcher researcher at the University of Fribourg, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
I am a member of three research groups:
- Thumos, a research group for emotions, norms and values based at the University of Geneva.
- The Culinary Mind, a research center and network for the philosophy of food that I co-founded in 2017 and that is formally based at the University of Milan
- Experience and Reason, a research group in philosophy of mind and normativity, based at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Some recent research outputs:
- A Philosophy and Recipes. Making, Experiencing, Valuing. Borghini, A. and Engisch, P. (eds.). Bloomsbury, 2022.
- Philosophy of Fiction: Imagination and Cognition. Engisch, P. and Langkau, J. (eds.), Routledge, 2023.
- "Modelling Culinary Value", In: Journal of Asthetics and Art Criticism, 2022.
- "Recipes, Tradition, and Representation", In: Borghini and Engisch (eds.), 2022.
- "Imagination, Fiction, and Narrative", In: Engisch and Langkau (eds.), 2023.
Projects I am currently working on:
- A book on “naturalness” as a metaphysical and normatively relevant kind in the philosohy of food, with natural wine as a special case study, tentatively titled Product, Appreciation, and Value. A Philosophical Perspective on Natural Wine.
- A paper on "Imagination, Creativity, and the Culinary Arts" for the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Creativity, edited by Amy Kind and Julia Langkau.
- A paper on "The Heritage Value of Culinary Items" for a special issue of the Journal of Arts and Aesthetic Criticism.
- A paper on "Empathising Across Sentiments" with Julia Lankgau for a special issue of Philosophical Explorations.
- A series of papers on creativity, as part of Julia Langkau SNF Prima Project "Creativity, Imagination, and Tradition".
- A paper about olfactory experience centred around the idea that we standardly experience multimodal objects in a multimodal way.
When not doing philosophy, I like to cook, grow veggies, seat behind the drums in some loud sounding bands, give a hand to my friends of Nouvel Opera de Fribourg/Neue Oper Freiburg and, maybe most of all, spend time with my ten sheep and three cats.