Doctoral Candidate Julian Tobias Klar

After having studied my B.A.- and M.A.-programs in Political Science and in Philosophy, I specialized in Political Theory, conducting now my PhD-research on a thorough comparison of the political theories of Hannah Arendt and John Dewey. Both Arendt and Dewey already were well aware of several challenges to democracy that nowadays have exacerbated the dangers to our polity, such as misinformation and propaganda, violent ideologies, populism, and societal polarization. Also using unpublished source material from their intellectual inheritances, I argue in my research that their theories of the political can provide us with practical responses in the face of all these challenges. For researching these papers, I spent research stays at two universities in the USA in 2022, having made valuable connections to international researchers from both the US and the world.

As I am the first academic in my family, I realize the potential of university education for improving both individuals as well as society, committing to the academia’s responsibility in empowering citizens to shape politics in a sustainably democratic way – both domestically and worldwide.

I always had a vivid interest in interdisciplinary research and corresponding collaborations and in the combination of diverse perspectives that can provide great added value to research, which is also why I joined the HGGS for complementing my PhD-program in an interdisciplinary way.

My personal interests include travelling and exposing myself to different cultures and to new experiences of all sorts, this way challenging my own assumptions in order to further develop my own strengths and capabilities, also by organizing university-events, such as 2023’s HGGS-Forum, among others. Turning my hobby – Political Theory – into a career, I enjoy presenting my research at conferences, this way also being able to network with international researchers.