Academic Career and Research Areas

Philipp Stehr works in contemporary political philosophy with a focus on economic institutions. Much of his work concerns the question what a commitment to democracy means for economic institutions, studying issues like workers' rights, workplace democracy, and strikes. He also has research interests in business ethics and the ethics and political philosophy of resistance and social change. One overarching aim in this research is to clarify abstract normative claims through their application to real examples, closely integrating empirical research.

Philipp Stehr studied philosophy and business administration at Goethe-University Frankfurt as well as the interdisciplinary MA Ethics - Economics, Law, and Politics at Ruhr-University Bochum. In 2025, he received his PhD from Utrecht University with a dissertation entitled Democratizing Business Corporations - An Exercise in Transitional Theory. In Utrecht, he was a PhD researcher in the project The Political Theory of the Business Corporation from 2020 to 2024 and then worked as a lecturer at the Ethics Institute from November 2024 to July 2025.

 

Key Publications

Stehr P: “A Democratic Right to Political Strikes”. Political Philosophy. 2025; 2 (2): 575-604. Abstract

Stehr P: “Expropriation as a Measure of Corporate Reform: Learning from the Berlin Initiative”. European Journal of Political Theory. 2025; 24 (1): 70–91. Abstract

Stehr P: “The Boundary Problem in Workplace Democracy: Who Constitutes the Corporate Demos?” Political Theory. 2023; 51 (3): 507–529. Abstract