Marcel van Ackeren is a Gerda Henkel Fellow (2017-2019) at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and "Privatdozent" at the University of Cologne, Germany. He studied philosophy and social sciences at Glasgow University and obtained his diploma in Political Theory from the University of Duisburg in 1996. After two years as visiting researcher in Oxford (1996-8), he obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bochum (2000). He did research in Cambridge (2017) and Berne (2003-5). From 2007 on, he was assistant professor in Cologne, where he obtained his postdoctoral qualification ("Habilitation") in 2010. His current research focuses on methodology in philosophy, especially on the historical perspective, and on demandingness.