Neelke Doorn
- Visiting address:
- Jaffalaan 5 Delft
Room B4.050 - Post address:
- P.O. Box 5015
2628 BX Delft
The Netherlands
Profile
Profile
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professor (full professor).
Research interests: ethics of water engineering - philosophy of technology - water ethics - resilience - responsible innovation - philosophy of risk - ethics and design
Neelke Doorn is Professor of Ethics of Water Engineering and Head of the Department of Values, Technology and Innovation at Delft University of Technology. She is a Fellow of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). Her multidisciplinary academic background spans Civil Engineering (TU Delft, BSc and MSc, both cum laude), Philosophy (Leiden University, BA and MA, both cum laude), and Law (Open University, LLB and LLM, both cum laude), positioning her uniquely at the interface of technology, ethics, and policy.
Neelke has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles. Until 2020, she served as Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal and member of the Board of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. Together with Diane P. Michelfelder, Neelke is editor of the Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering (2021). A second edition of this Handbook will be published in 2027. Another recent book is the monograph Water Ethics: An Introduction (2019), published with Rowman & Littlefield.
Research profile
Neelkeās current research focuses on the moral and ethical dimensions of risk governance, climate adaptation, and resilience, particularly in the water domain. In 2013, she received a personal NWO Veni grant for her project The ethics of flood risk management. In 2019, she received a personal NWO Vidi grant for her project āResponsibility arrangements in resilience policy for climate adaptationā.
Together with Michael Nagenborg, Neelke worked on the BRIDE project, which aims to explore the role of smart public infrastructure in making and re-making of public space. This project was funded under the Smart Culture ā Creative Cities scheme.
Read more about Neelkeās research here. A recording of Neelkeās 2018 inaugural address āValues in waterā can be viewed here. The full text of the address can be downloaded here (Dutch) and here (English).
Past research and working experience
Neelke has ten years of experience as a coastal engineering research engineer (1998-2007). In 2007, Neelke joined the Philosophy Section of the TU Delft. Between 2006 and 2010, she was affiliated with the Radboud University in Nijmegen, where she held a part-time research position at the Centre of Ethics focusing on global justice issues. Neelke spent the spring 2010 term as a visiting researcher at the Philosophy Department of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, where she did research on the ethical assumptions underlying different approaches to safety management, and again in fall 2024, to collaborate on rational goal setting in the water domain.
Other academic activities
Neelke has organized several international conferences and workshops, including the 2023 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET 2023) in April 2023. In 2012, she initiated an international expert community on water ethics. She serves on several advisory committees and is regularly invited to give public talks on the interface of technology, risk, and ethics. She also publishes opinion pieces in both international and national newspapers.
Publications
https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Water-Ethics-Introduction-Neelke-Doorn/dp/1786609517