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RIPPLE

RIPPLE (Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics Leuven) is a vibrant research unit dedicated to critical and moral reflection on politics, law and society.

View all RIPPLE members

 News

  • Two RIPPLE-candidates have been awarded an FWO postdoctoral grant: Daniele Giuseppe Palmer (junior) and Anton Jäger (senior). Congratulations to Daniele and Anton! 

RIPPLE in the media

About RIPPLE

RIPPLE unites the ongoing Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics in Leuven. We are interested in what happens to the traditional toolbox of political philosophy and ethics – including concepts such as sovereignty, justice, equality, dignity, indignation, truth, the public sphere, constitutions, identity, democracy, citizenship, and representation – when the nation-state is demoted to just one layer of public morality and decision-making among many others. RIPPLE’s interest in studying this new, ‘multilevel’ reality has led us to publish on postnational citizenship, constitutionalism beyond the state, European distributive justice, populism, climate ethics, federalism, sustainable development, and the rights of immigrants. Beyond these, we also have a keen interest in meta-ethics, gender justice, media ethics, the ethics of responsibility, and Wittgensteinian approaches to moral and political philosophy. 

A noteworthy feature of RIPPLE is our explicit ambition to engender dialogue among divergent approaches and traditions. While some members take a critical theory angle, others engage in descriptive or hermeneutic perspectives, and still others work out moral principles. Some stress justice, others power. Several members interweave elements from multiple traditions, such as postcolonial, Anglo-American and continental theory.  

RIPPLE was established in 2004 at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven’s long-standing faculty of philosophy. RIPPLE currently counts 11 senior staff members, 10 postdoctoral researchers, and more than 30 doctoral students hailing from across the globe. This makes RIPPLE one of Europe's largest research centers for political philosophy and ethics.

The diversity of approaches, backgrounds and themes requires a specific kind of organization betraying a federal touch. On the one hand, all RIPPLE researchers get together on a monthly basis for our plenary RIPPLE research seminar, which forms the heart of our collective activities. On the other hand, a significant part of the daily life of our center is organized around three seminars, each with a distinct research approach and focus: critical theory and democracy, justice and public ethics, and ethics. In doing all of the above, RIPPLE aims to provide an inclusive, diversity-friendly and welcoming research context at the forefront of contemporary debates in ethics and political philosophy.

Video

In this video, Toon Braeckman, Helder De Schutter, Michael Jewkes, and Liesbeth Schoonheim present RIPPLE's research programme

RIPPLE plenary seminars 2024-2025 

(Thursdays, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.)

  • October 10: Alfred Moore (York University and RIPPLE fellow)

  • October 24: Nikhil Krishnan (University of Cambridge)

  • December 5: Christoph Menke (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

  • February 13: Dorothea Gädeke (Utrecht University)

  • March 27: Mirjam Müller (Humboldt University Berlin)

  • April 24: Simon James (Durham University)

  • May 8: Jonathan Wolff (University of Oxford)

Recent RIPPLE Articles

Contact

Director: Prof. dr. Raf Geenens
KU Leuven, Institute of Philosophy 
Andreas Vesaliusstraat 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Phone: +32 16 32 88 52
E-mail: raf.geenens@kuleuven.be 

 
 

 

 

Last update: Jun 03, 2025

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