Mark Schweda heads the Department of Ethics in Medicine at the Department of Health Services Research of Faculty VI - Medicine and Health Sciences at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Prior to this, he was assistant professor at the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine of the University Medical Center Göttingen, where he attained the venia legendi. Schweda was a Junior Research Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg / Göttingen School for Advanced Study (2014-2015) and spent research stays at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society of the University of California, Berkeley (2012), the Department of Philosophy of the San Francisco State University (2011), as well as at the Center for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics at the University of Lancaster (2009). His academic qualification at the Humboldt University at Berlin and the University of Nottingham (UK) included philosophy, German philology and journalism.

Mark Schweda’s research interests include the relevance of modern medicine and technology for individual self-conceptions and concepts of life. A special focus is on questions of aging, the life course, and human temporality in general. Thus, he investigates the influence of new possibilities of medical prediction and prevention on individual life planning, the role of medical treatment and the assistive (information) technologies for a good life in old age, as well as the importance of changing scientific concepts and cultural interpretations of dementia. In his work, he combines ethical reflections with approaches from social research, cultural studies, and political theory in order to include personal perceptions (experiences of affected people, public attitudes), symbolic interpretive patterns (images, metaphors, medial representations) and institutional contexts (legal conditions plus political forms of organization and potentials of participation).