Annette Zimmermann

Univ.Prof. Dr. Zimmermann’s research interests focus on the political philosophy of AI and AI ethics, democratic theory, social epistemology, and the philosophy of science. During the academic year of 2025/26, Zimmermann holds the Interim Chair in Political Philosophy at the University of Bayreuth and a Research Fellowship at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin. Zimmermann is normally an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they are also a member of the University’s interdisciplinary cluster in the ethics of computing, data, and information, and an Affiliate Professor at the Department of Statistics. Zimmermann also co-leads the Uncertainty & AI group at the Institute for Research in the Humanities.

Before that, Zimmermann was a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. In addition, Zimmermann was a permanent Lecturer  at the Department of Philosophy at the University of York in the United Kingdom, and a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, with a joint appointment at the Center for Human Values and the Center for Information Technology Policy. Zimmermann holds a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford.

Zimmermann’s first book is titled Democratizing AI (forthcoming May 2026). Zimmermann’s research has been published in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and in Philosophy and Public Affairs, and their public writing has appeared in the New Statesman and in the Boston Review. Zimmermann frequently advises policy-makers and technologists working on contemporary ethical and political issues surrounding AI and other forms of technology, including UNESCO, the OECD, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, the German Aerospace Center, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the UK Parliament, and the UK government’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation.