Of Swiss origin, also with Brazilian citizenship. Licentiate (1993) and Doctor of Theology (2001), both by the University of Basel, Switzerland, which also awarded him the Amerbach Prize for an outstanding dissertation, in 2002. From 2003 to 2019 he was professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue at the Lutheran School of Theology (Faculdades EST) at São Leopoldo/Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where he also served as Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Research (2007-19) and as founding Director of the Institute of Ethics of Faculdades EST (2014-19). While he continues part-time at Faculdades EST during the first semester of 2019, he assumed office as Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR) in Curitiba in March, 2019. In September of the same year, he assumed the post of Head of the Graduate Programme in Theology. He was a researcher of the Swiss National Foundation for Research (SNF), with a project about the contribution of the Brazilian churches for democracy and citizenship (2003-06), and a member-in-residence of the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) in Princeton/New Jersey, from 2006-07, as well as a fellow of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen (Germany), in 2011. In 2010, he obtained the Habilitation and Venia Docendi at the University of Berne, Switzerland. He is a member of the Nacional Association of Postgraduate and Research Programs in Theology and Religious Studies, whose scientific commission he was a member of and presided over. He is also a member of the Society for Protestant Theology (GET, Germany), the German Society of Missiology, and the Theological Society for Southern Africa. He is the moderator of the Comission on Ecumenical Education and Formation of the World Council of Churches and was, from 2016 to 2019, a member of the National Comittee of Respect to Religious Diversity of the Federal Government´s Secretariat on Human Rights. His fields of research are: public theology, political ethics, bioethics, ecumenical and inter-religious hermeneutics, religious mobility and pluralism, contextual, intercultural and ecumenical theology, doctrine of the Trinity and Ecclesiology. In 2013 and again in 2016 and in 2019 he was appointed Professor Extra-Ordinary at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He held an experienced researcher fellowship by CAPES/Humboldt Foundation at the University of Göttingen (2013-14) and Munich (2014-15 and 2015-16) and currently holds a productivity fellowhip by the Council for Scientific and Techological Development (C/NPq).

Professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue; Escola Superior de Teologia São Leopoldo Rio, Grande do Sul (Brazil); Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba (Brazil); Moderator of the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Education and Formation Commission; Member of Globethics Board of Foundation.