Nikolaus Knoepffler (born 1962 in Miltenberg, Bavaria) is a philosopher and theologian. He currently holds the Chair of Applied Ethics and is the director of the Ethics Center (Ethikzentrum) at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. Knoepffler is founder and president of the Global Applied Ethics Institute, a consortium mainly involved with research on bioethics and business ethics.
Knoepffler studied philosophy and theology in Würzburg and Rome (1981–1990) where the Pontifical Gregorian University awarded him a licentiate in theology (1989), in philosophy (1990), and a doctorate in philosophy (1992). [1] He was awarded the habilitation in 1998 as well as further doctorates in political science from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and in theology from the University of Bern.
He was a fellow at the Institute of Technology - Theology - Natural Sciences (TTN) in Munich from 1996 to 2000, and was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1998. He then became deputy manager at TTN (2000–02). [2]
In 2002, he was a visiting professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He was then appointed Professor of Applied Ethics at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, where he also leads the Center of Applied Ethics (Ethikzentrum), the Department of Ethics in Sciences, and the Institute of History, Theory, and Ethics in Medicine. [3]
He is president of the German Academy for Transplantation Medicine, and of the Global Applied Ethics Institute. From 2005 to 2019 Knoepffler was chair of the Ethics Commission of the Department of Social and Humanistic Studies, University of Jena. He is a member of the Bavarian Ethics Committee and the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis Commission at the Landesärztekammer Baden-Württemberg . From 2006 to 2013 he chaired the Graduate School on human dignity and human rights funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He was a principal investigator (2012-2018) in the trilateral project "Hearts of Flesh - not Stone", funded by the DFG, that included scholars from Israel, Palestine and Germany.
Knoepffler speaks in academic and popular contexts on topics related to his field of ethics. For example, he lectured at the “Wissensforum 2007” of the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the topic "Kant and the Stock Exchange." [4] His research specialties include bioethics, human dignity, conflict management, business ethics, leadership, and German philosophy. He has published widely in all these fields.
The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, or Leibniz Prize, is awarded by the German Research Foundation to "exceptional scientists and academics for their outstanding achievements in the field of research". Since 1986, up to ten prizes have been awarded annually to individuals or research groups working at a research institution in Germany or at a German research institution abroad. It is considered the most important research award in Germany.
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