I’m interested in the bad things in life, how they relate to the good things, and what this can tell us about how to live.
My research explores illness, grief and mortality; epistemic injustice; misanthropy and pessimism; our relationships with animals and the natural world; and classical Chinese philosophy.
Across these areas, I’m interested in how we acknowledge difficult realities, how we evade them, and what it takes to respond well.
My work on illness and healthcare examines how people’s knowledge and experiences are ignored, discounted or misunderstood. As part of the EPIC project, I contribute to collaborative research on epistemic injustice in healthcare. I’m particularly interested in listening, questioning and silence, and in how institutions can recognise problems yet repeatedly fail to learn from them. This research also considers how our reluctance to confront vulnerability, dependency and mortality can affect our willingness to hear what ill people have to say.
I’m currently writing a book on philosophical misanthropy: critical judgements of humankind’s collective moral condition. It examines the human failings that motivate those judgements and the different responses they inspire, including opposition, withdrawal, activism and quietism. With Kathryn Norlock, I’m also co-editing Misanthropy: Philosophical Essays. My interests in pessimism concern how we recognise suffering, failure and the limits of human agency, and how these judgements can inform our hopes and commitments. Related work explores cynicism, moral self-deception, and the pressures to remain positive when truthfulness calls for something more difficult.
My research on animals asks how human arrogance and moral vanity shape our perceptions of other creatures, including our willingness to recognise their capacities and forms of excellence. Mary Midgley’s philosophy is an important influence on this work, alongside philosophical traditions that challenge human self-importance. Buddhist and Classical Chinese philosophy, especially Confucian and Daoist thought, informs my wider interests in character, relationships and ways of life.
I’m drawn to philosophy that helps us attend more carefully to the world and consider how we might live within it.