Profile

ORCID: 0000-0002-6682-9722

Profile

Biographical note:

Claudia Welz (b. 1974) has studied Theology and Philosophy in Tübingen, Jerusalem, Heidelberg and München. She was a PhD student at the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion, University of Zürich (2003-2006), a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Subjectivity Research (2006-2010), and a professor with special responsibilities in Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Copenhagen (2010-2018), where she in 2014 founded the interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Jewish Thought in Modern Culture.

In 2019-20, she was a senior research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Bad Homburg & Goethe-University Frankfurt  contributing to the LOEWE project Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Contexts (see https://relpos.de/), visiting researcher at Agder University, Kristiansand/Norway, and visiting professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) at University of Duisburg-Essen.

Since September 2020, she is Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University.  

Publications:

Claudia Welz is the author of the research monographs 

• Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy (Mohr Siebeck, 2008)
• Vertrauen und Versuchung (Mohr Siebeck, 2010)
• Humanity in God’s Image: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (Oxford University Press, 2016)
• the essay collection SinnSang: Theologie und Poesie (Nordpark-Verlag, 2019) about the work of the poet Elazar Benyoëtz, including an exchange of letters
• Gehör für das Unsichtbare: Die Stimme der Stille und die Sprache des Gebets (Königshausen & Neumann, 2025).

She co-authored and (co-)edited the anthologies Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and Its Secret in Kierkegaard and Levinas (2008); Trust, Sociality, Selfhood (2010); Ethics of In-Visibility: Imago Dei, Memory, and Human Dignity in Jewish and Christian Thought (2015); Hermeneutics and Negativism: Ambiguities of Self-Understanding (2018); BUCHSTABIL: Von Büchen und Menschen. Elazar Benyoëtz zum 85. Geburtstag (2022) and, in addition,

served as (co-)editor of the following special issues of journals:

• Passions in Context: International Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions, 2 (2011): Atrocities – Emotion – Self
• Scandinavian Jewish Studies 28:1 (2017): Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Memory
• Scandinavian Jewish Studies 29:1 (2018): The Problem of Evil and Images of (In)Humanity
• Judaica: Neue digitale Folge 3 (2022): https://doi.org/10.36950/jndf.2022.10
• Religions 14: 354 (2023): Ethical and Epistemological Aspects of 'Dialogue': Exploring the Potential of the Second-Person Perspective. A Festschrift in honor of Paul Mendes-Flohr on the occasion of his eightieth birthday
• a topical issue of the open-access journal Open Philosophy 7 (2024): Dialogical Approaches to the Sphere ‘in-between’ Self and Other: The Methodological Meaning of Listening
• and a special issue of New Journal of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion 67: 1 (2025): Dialogue and Relational Ontology: Rethinking the Significance of the Second-Person Perspective.

Research interests:

• Ethics and philosophy of religion 
• Systematic theology (in particular theology of the Reformation, modern and post-Holocaust theology, theological anthropology) in an interreligious context
• 19^th and 20^th century Jewish thought
• Continental philosophy (in particular German idealism, existential philosophy, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and philosophy of dialogue)
• Kierkegaard studies
• Environmental and climate ethics, eco-theology and -phenomenology
• Hospitality, migration, and dialogical listening
• Modern Jewish thought and German-Jewish literature
• Theories of subjectivity, self-understanding, and personhood
• Philosophy of language and of emotion
• Philosophy of psychology and psychiatry including trauma and memory studies
• Arts-based research including poetry, visual art, and music

Research leadership/management:

Claudia Welz is heading the collective interdisciplinary research project “Epistemological Aspects of ‘Dialogue’: Exploring the Potential of the Second-Person Perspective” (2021-2025, funded by a Starting Grant from Aarhus University Research Foundation).

Since 2021, she is the co-founder and co-director of the Research Unit for Kierkegaard Studies at Aarhus University, see https://cas.au.dk/en/research-unit-for-kierkegaard-studies.

Current research (work in progress):

• Vox peregrina: A Phenomenology of Listening to What Cannot be Heard (single-authored trilogy)
• Traumatized Memory and Hopeful Imagination: Ethics, Theology, and Arts-Based Research (monograph)

Relevant websites:

• https://www.academia-net.org/profil/prof-dr-claudia-welz/1196672
• claudiawelz.com/
• https://projects.au.dk/dialogue/research-team-and-sub-projects/