Erik Magnusson

I am a political philosopher based at the University of Manitoba, where I serve as a Research Facilitator in the Faculty of Education, a Sessional Instructor in the Departments of Political Studies and Philosophy, and an Associate of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics. From 2016 - 2018, I was a post-doctoral researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, working as part of an ERC-funded project on "Justice and the Family: An Analysis of the Normative Significance of Procreation and Parenting in a Just Society," led by Serena Olsaretti. Prior to arriving at UPF, I completed a D.Phil in political theory at the University of Oxford, where I wrote a dissertation on the morality of procreation under the supervision of Simon Caney.

My research explores how morality applies to the family and regulates the relationships within and between families. I am particularly interested in questions about the moral rights and obligations of parents, including how parents come to acquire special rights and/or obligations to parent particular children, what they are morally permitted and/or obligated to do to, with, and for the children under their care, and how their procreative and parenting projects fit within broader accounts of social and distributive justice. Not only are these questions philosophically interesting in their own right, forcing reflection on issues such as the value of parenting and the moral status of children, but they also lie at the heart of some of the most pressing ethical controversies involving families, from the assignment of parental rights and obligations in child custody disputes, to the intergenerational transmission of culture or advantage, to the social distribution of childrearing costs more generally. By exploring the grounds and contents of the rights and obligations of parents, my research seeks to shed light on these issues and thereby advance our understanding of the moral dimensions of the family.