My research lies within normative ethics, practical ethics, and metaphysics. I am generally interested in the ethics of helping and harming, with particular interest in issues surrounding aggregation, distributive justice, and risk. I am keen to explore the practical applications of ethical theory to public policy, especially health policy.
My doctoral research, funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, focused on the moral reasons we have to do less than best, and how these might map onto practical debates, including longtermism and, more generally, our obligations to help future people. My thesis - Doing Less Than Best - can be found here. You can hear me talk about my research here and here.
Below you can find an overview of some of my more developed work.
Articles
1. (2023). "Impairing the Impairment Argument", Journal of Medical Ethics, with Kyle van Oosterum
2. (2022). "Must We Vaccinate the Most Vulnerable? Efficiency, Priority, and Equality in the Distribution of Vaccines", Journal of Applied Philosophy, with Stephen John
Blog post: Why should we protect the vulnerable?
3. (2021). "Costa, Cancer, and Coronavirus: contractualism as a guide to the ethics of lockdown", Journal of Medical Ethics, with Stephen John
Blog post: Coffee or COVID?
Chapters
4. (forthcoming) "Longtermism and the Complaints of Future People", in Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves, and David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism, Oxford University Press
Under Review
5. A paper arguing that longtermism is in conflict with scepticism about aggregation when viewed from both the ex-ante and ex-post perspectives. (draft)
In Preparation
6. A paper arguing that our thinking about beneficence mistakenly ignores the importance of agglomeration.
7. A paper on the moral grounds of an aversion to dooming.
8. A paper arguing that fairness requires paying special attention to the risks facing presently existing people.
9. A paper defending ex-post non-consequentialism.
10. A paper criticising Theron Pummer's (2014) and Joe Horton's (2017) arguments for the conditional obligation.