Broadly speaking, my research is concerned with epistemological, methodological and metaphysical questions in science.
I am for one interested in questions of scientific methodology in modern fundamental physics. Scientists develop and trust in theories like string theory, supersymmetry or cosmic inflation for decades, while empirical data to confirm them is missing. Why do scientists put so much trust into them? While there may be a sociological aspect to this question, I am interested in whether there is a justifiable rationale that is being followed. And if yes, whether these theories can be considered confirmed based on non-empirical or indirect empirical evidence. Related to this justificatory component is the crucial role of theory development in its assessment. Theories are not only developed based on certain empirical observations in need of an explanation, but also on conceptual problems that generate the development of new theories. Part of this are usually implicit underlying epistemological and ontological commitments that play a role in the theories overall assessment. In particular, I am interested in the role of symmetries, meta-principles (like Naturalness and finetuning assumptions) and impossibility results.