It started with a question… and a childhood wish to become a wizard.
A wizard, to me, was someone like Merlin: deep in books, haunting dusty attics, carrying bags full of mystery and quiet magic. As a philosopher, I find myself in the most unexpected places. The dusty attic I have at home, but it is the old archives, the studios of artists, the ancient telescopes I visit that complete the image. My bag of magic holds a laptop, writing materials, and a camera. Thinking about thinking is not so different from devising spells, though I try, as best I can, to cast them in clear language.
The question in this matter was (and still is): What is imagination? And I try to answer this question through my work as a philosopher working at the intersection of science, imagination, and space. My research asks what it means to imagine the universe and what that imagining does to us.
I write and lecture on the philosophy of space exploration, the ethics of technology, and the cultural life of scientific ideas. I teach at ArtEZ University of the Arts, working with designers on the questions that don’t fit neatly into a brief. In 2023 I joined ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team as philosopher in residence, to explore the role of imagination in space science. My book on the imagination of space is forthcoming with Ten Have in 2027.
My academic background is in the philosophy of science. My master’s research centred on Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634) , one of the earliest works of science fiction, in which a dream voyage to the moon becomes a vehicle for astronomical argument.
That early fascination with how imagination and science intertwine has shaped everything since.
Space has always been a screen for our utopias and dystopias, a place we project our hopes and fears onto as much as we explore it. That tension is at the heart of my work.
Film, philosophy, and the future are recurring preoccupations, not as separate interests but as different angles on the same question: how do we picture what doesn’t exist yet, and why does it matter?
I am currently an external PhD candidate at Utrecht University’s Freudenthal Institute, under the supervision of Guido Bacciagaluppi (Utrecht), Mike Stuart (York) and Jai Grover (ESA Advanced Concepts Team), researching the epistemic value of imagination in space science and exploration.
My PhD research centres on a question that sounds simple but isn’t: what does imagination actually do in space science?
Mission planners imagine scenarios that haven’t happened yet. When a rover lands on Mars with incomplete data about the terrain, imagination fills the gap between what is known and what must be decided.
When a team asks whether we could grow an exoskeleton to support the human body during extended spaceflight, or tries to form a picture of an exoplanet no instrument has ever directly seen, that is imagination at work, not as speculation, but as a legitimate epistemic tool.
My research asks how space scientists themselves understand the role of imagination in their practice, and what value it holds for the future of space exploration. I talk to scientists, artists and designers, because imagination doesn’t respect disciplinary boundaries, and neither should the philosophy of it.
Underlying all of this is a broader argument: that imagination matters not only scientifically but ethically and politically.
The questions of how and why we explore space are inseparable from the capacity to picture what that exploration could mean, for us, and for everything beyond us.
