Ana Honnacker is a researcher with expertise in philosophy of religion, political and social philosophy, as well as environmental philosophy. She combines these perspectives in her work on the idea of „ecological meliorism“, a reconstruction of environmental pragmatism in the light of the current ecological situation.
From 2023 to 2026, she was a visiting professor in philosophy of religion at LMU Munich. Before that, she held postdoctoral positions in the research project “Politics in Search of Evidence: The Role of Political Philosophy and Public Health in the Political Responses to COVID-19”, funded by the German Research foundation, at Munich School of Philosophy, and at Forschungsinstitut für Philosophy Hannover. Since 2008 she has taught at several German universities. Honnacker has been a visiting scholar at the philosophy department of Columbia University and a research fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) in Heidelberg. She is a member of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Religionsphilosophie, of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment (EFSRE), and co-founder and executive board member of the German Pragmatism Network.
Honnacker has published extensively on pragmatist thinking and is interested in exploring philosophy as a practical attitude, as, for example, in her book Pragmatic Humanism Revisited. An Essay on Making the World a Home (2018). In MePhiS, she aims to elaborate on ecological meliorism as a stance that enables one to stay resilient and capable of acting despite a narrowing sense of future.
Professor Risto Saarinen's expertise focuses on the history of philosophy and theology in the Western tradition. Contemporary discussions on gift and recognition and the dialogue between religious convictions continue to interest him. As senior advisor of MePhis, his role is supportive rather than committed to realizing a particular agenda. Saarinen intends to work on the practices of consolation and the understanding of "burdens" as the negative counterparts of gifts.
Taru Auranne is a project coordinator at the University of Helsinki Research services and supports MePhiS in administrative and practical matters.