Mark Coeckelbergh (born 1975 in Leuven, Belgium) is a Belgian philosopher of technology. He studied at KU Leuven, the University of East Anglia, and the University of Birmingham, completing his 2003 work "The metaphysics of autonomy : the reconciliation of ancient and modern". His academic appointments have included positions at the University of Maastricht, the University of Twente, De Montfort University, and the University of Vienna.

He serves as Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna, holds the ERA Chair at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, and is a Guest Professor at WASP-HS and the University of Uppsala.^[3,2] An expert in the ethics of artificial intelligence, he is best known for his work in the philosophy of technology and the ethics of robotics, with his research also focusing on ethics and technology, ethics and information technology, and environmental philosophy.^[4] He has also published in moral philosophy, environmental philosophy, and political philosophy, authoring several books and numerous articles with an h-index of 65 as of January 2026.^[5] In addition, Coeckelbergh is a member of national and international committees with direct impact on policy, including the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, and contributes to public discourse in the popular press.

Mark Coeckelbergh was born in 1975 in Leuven, Belgium. He was first educated in social sciences and political sciences at the University of Leuven (Licentiaat, 1997), before moving to the UK, where he studied philosophy. He received his master's degree from the University of East Anglia (MA in Social Philosophy, 1999) and his PhD from the University of Birmingham (PhD in Philosophy, 2003).^[6] During the time of his PhD study he also painted, wrote poems, played piano, and worked on engineering ethics at the University of Bath (UK) and at the Belgian nuclear research centre SCK-CEN.

In 2003, he started teaching at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and in 2007 he was an assistant professor at the Philosophy Department of the University of Twente, also in the Netherlands. In the same year, he received the Prize of the Dutch Society for Bioethics with J. Mesman.^[8] While in Twente, he began working on the ethics of robotics. In 2013, he became Managing Director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology.^[7]

In 2014, he was appointed full professor at the Centre of Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, a position he held through early 2019.^[7] In 2014 and 2017, he was nominated for the World Technology Awards in the Ethics category.^[9] In 2015, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna as full Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology.^[1] Coeckelbergh is also the former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.^[10]

Coeckelbergh has membership in numerous domestic and international committees with direct impact on policy, including serving as a member of the Expert Council Ethics of AI of the Austrian Unesco Commission.^[11,12] He previously served as a member of the High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence for the European Commission, the Austrian robotics council (Rat für Robotik) inaugurated by the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, and the Austrian Advisory Council on Automated Mobility.^[11,12]

Coeckelbergh has published opinion articles in The Guardian, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, De Morgen, De Standaard, Der Standard, and Wired, and co-authored opinion articles have appeared in La Libre, Morgenbladet, and Der Tagesspiegel, among others.^{[13,14,19,21,36]} He has also been interviewed or served as an expert for articles published in Christian Science Monitor, CNN, De Morgen, De Standaard, De Tijd, Der Spiegel, Der Standard, Die Presse, El Independiente, El Mundo, El País, Folha de S. Paulo, Handelsblatt, Infobae, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Salzburger Nachrichten, The New Yorker, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Times, and others.^[22,37,39]

Following his articles on robot ethics and his book Growing Moral Relations, Coeckelbergh has been attributed a 'relational turn' in thinking about moral status.^[42,41] In his articles, Coeckelbergh argues for a phenomenological and relational approach. His book AI Ethics is a popular introduction to the topic and has been widely praised.^[43,44] In his recent work, he has argued for more cultural approaches to the meaning of technology that bring out technologies' “grammar” or conditions of possibility and for using political philosophy to better understand the politics of AI.^[47,45]

Earlier publications include Liberation and Passion: Reconstructing the Passion Perspective on Human Being and Freedom (DenkMal Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-935404-06-9), followed by The Metaphysics of Autonomy: The Reconciliation of Ancient and Modern Ideals of the Person (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, ISBN 9781403939388) and Imagination and Principles: An Essay on the Role of Imagination in Moral Reasoning (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, ISBN 9780230552791). Subsequent works include Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ISBN 9781137025951) and Human Being @ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations (Springer, 2013, ISBN 978-94-007-6024-0).

In 2015, Money Machines: Electronic Financial Technologies, Distancing, and Responsibility in Global Finance (Ashgate, ISBN 978-1-4724-4508-7) and Environmental Skill: Motivation, Knowledge, and the Possibility of a Non-Romantic Environmental Ethics (Routledge, ISBN 978-1-13-888557-8) were published. These were followed in 2017 by Using Words and Things: Language and Philosophy of Technology (Routledge, ISBN 9780367595029) and New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine (MIT Press, ISBN 9780262035460). In 2019, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology (Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780190939809) and Moved by Machines: Performance Metaphors and Philosophy of Technology (Routledge, ISBN 9780367245573) were released.

Publications in 2020 include AI Ethics (MIT Press, ISBN 9780262538190) and Narrative and Technology Ethics, co-authored with Wessel Reijers (Springer, ISBN 9783030602710). In 2021, Green Leviathan or The Poetics of Political Liberty: Navigating Freedom in the Age of Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence was published by Routledge (ISBN 9780367747794). Books published in 2022 comprise Robot Ethics (MIT Press, ISBN 9780262544092), The Political Philosophy of AI (Polity, ISBN 9781509548545), and Self-Improvement: Technologies of the Soul in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231206556). Later works include Digital Technologies, Temporality, and the Politics of Co-Existence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, ISBN 9783031179815) and Why AI Undermines Democracy and What To Do About It (Polity, 2024). Publications for 2025 include Communicative AI with David Gunkel (Polity, ISBN 9781509567607) and Introduction to the Ethics of Emerging Technologies with Wessel Reijers and Mark Thomas Young (Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-3-031-85886-4).