It was an honor to be invited by the Albertus Institute to give a keynote to open their academic programme this year. On 11 September 2026 at New College, University of Edinburgh I spoke on "Albert the Great on Becoming Fully Human: Virtue, Judgement, and Perfection." In the lecture I opened with two quotes from Magnifica humanitas on the human being in the age of AI and then turned to the thought of Albert the Great and presented his vision for how human beings achieve the perfection of human nature.

🌿 Honored and Grateful 🌿

I'm thrilled to share that I’ve been awarded First Prize in the 2025 British Royal Society’s Notes and Records Essay Award for my article, “From Curiosity to Marvel: The Shared Experience of the American Agave Plant by Early Members of the Leopoldina.”

This piece explores how early modern scientists encountered and interpreted the agave plant in gardens throughout Germany—not just as a botanical specimen, but as a powerful site of wonder, translation, and epistemic transformation leading to divine contemplation within global science.

My deepest thanks to the award committee for this recognition and to the Leopoldina Freundeskreis, which funded this research project in its early stages—and to my colleagues and mentors whose thoughtful conversations and insights shaped this work.

You can see the official announcement here.

Last week, I had the absolute pleasure of presenting my research on the influence of Averroes on Albert the Great's conception of virtue at the Aquinas and the 'Arabs' International Conference at Campion Hall, Oxford University.

Being part of this working group of scholars for the past ten years has shaped my research and I'm so grateful for the mentorship and collegiality of these distinguished scholars.

A piece I composed on my experiences running a postdoc network during my time as Spokesperson of the Max Planck PostdocNet has just been published in Nature Careers!

The piece addresses 4 challenges I encountered and my advice for overcoming them to successfully run a postdoc network. Additionally, the piece shares my reflections of engaging in professional service at an early career stage.

You can read it here.

In my role as Spokesperson of Max Planck PostdocNet I was invited to speak on the WissZeitVG for the German Scholars' Organization. You can read a recap of our session here. 

Watch here the Welcome Session of the German Scholars' Organization Conference To Be Honest on the Future of Academia. It was a pleasure to be part of this session!

This year PostdocNet celebrated five years as a network in the Max Planck Society. I had the amazing opportunity to interview President Cramer on all things postdocs! We premiered this interview at our General Meeting in Göttingen.

Looking for to talking about the WissZeitVG for the GSO conference on Thursday!

I was absolutely delighted to present at the workshop Glimpses of the Invisible: Visualizing the Principles of Nature Before the Rise of Modernity at the University of Messina. A special thank you to Nicola Polloni for the invitation. It was a fantastic workshop and I enjoyed presenting my research on Philipp Jakob Hartmann and his dissections and illustrations of 'unnatural' kidney shapes.

Looking forward to be a panelist on the Future of (German) Academia for the German Scholars Organization To be Honest Conference! Check it out and register!