Bridging inquiry across the humanities and social sciences, Dr. Reynolds' research explores foundational issues at the intersection of ethics, biomedicine, and society, with a special focus on identifying, mitigating, and eliminating health inequities faced by disabled people. Their work advocates for and facilitates research efforts that center the lived experiences of historically marginalized and oppressed groups as well as prioritizes community engagement across a diverse range of stakeholders to rectify health disparities and bring about health justice.
Joel Michael Reynolds is Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics …
Bridging inquiry across the humanities and social sciences, Dr. Reynolds' research explores foundational issues at the intersection of ethics, biomedicine, and society, with a special focus on identifying, mitigating, and eliminating health inequities faced by disabled people. Their work advocates for and facilitates research efforts that center the lived experiences of historically marginalized and oppressed groups as well as prioritizes community engagement across a diverse range of stakeholders to rectify health disparities and bring about health justice.
Joel Michael Reynolds is Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, Core Faculty in the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University School of Medicine/Georgetown University Medical Center, Senior Bioethics Advisor to The Hastings Center, and Faculty Scholar of The Greenwall Foundation. Since 2021, Dr. Reynolds has been a Visiting Lecturer in Bioethics at the Yale School of Medicine and this year was named Visiting Professor in Critical Care Ethics & Decision-Making at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. At Georgetown, they are also core faculty in the Disability Studies Program, core faculty in the Medical Humanities Initiative, and director of graduate placement in the Department of Philosophy. Reynolds is the founder of The Journal of Philosophy of Disability and co-founder of the book series Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society. In 2022, they were named an Honorary Fellow of the McLaughlin College of Public Policy at York University, and in 2023, they were elected as a Fellow of The Hastings Center.
Reynolds is the author or co-editor of six books including The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), The Disability Bioethics Reader (Routledge, 2022), The Meaning of Disability (Oxford University Press, 2025), Disability Justice in Public Health Emergencies (Routledge, 2025), and Philosophy of Disability: An Introduction (Polity, 2026). They are author or co-author of over fifty journal articles, book chapters, and scholarly commentaries, and their current research includes a number of article-length studies as well as books chapters for Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law, Methods in Medical Ethics, The Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology, The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, and The Oxford Handbook of Genetic Counseling. Their public philosophy has been featured in TIME, AEON, The Conversation, Health Progress, The Bioethics Forum, and in a Tedx talk.
Based on their 2018 AMA Journal of Ethics article, “Three Things Clinicians Should Know About Disability,” Dr. Reynolds regularly speaks with and consults for medical educators across specialties concerning how to improve the quality and equity of care for patients with disabilities, including recent talks at the schools of medicine at Harvard, Tufts, University of Washington, and UCLA, and for grand rounds in the USA and Canada, including Brown University’s Department of Emergency Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, Hackensack Meridian Health, Horizon Health Network, Parkland Health & Hospital System, and University of Texas Medical Branch. An internationally recognized expert on disability bioethics, they have given 100+ lectures, keynote addresses, and conference talks at universities and medical schools across the globe, including recent and upcoming international talks at the University of Southern Denmark, University of Lyon (France), University of Basel (Switzerland), Universidad de La Salle (Columbia), Middle East Technical University (Turkey), University of Otago (New Zealand/Aotearoa), University of Barcelona (Spain), Monash University (Australia), and Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada). Dr. Reynolds also advises and provides expert testimony for legal teams in the USA and Canada on disability discrimination and disability rights cases. See https://www.joelreynolds.me for more information.