Biography
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Bioethics at the University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre, where I am part of the ANTITHESES project investigating radical value disagreements in an age of polarisation and uncertainty. On the more theoretical end, I am studying the way in which our understanding of reasoning and argumentation has developed over time, to include or exclude the imagination, praxis and literary or historical writing. Drawing on thinkers such as Vico, Pascal, and Nietzsche, as well as more recent philosophers, I hope to shed light on the underlying clashes over what counts as ‘reasoning’ in the first place, which shape disagreements on more substantial issues. On the practical end, I am investigating the concept of ‘normative barriers’ – hidden barriers to speaking or taking action in certain ways, arising from the interplay between social structures and the normativity of language. Uncovering these barriers can help us make sense of disagreements in public life and in bioethics, such as disagreements over the place of mental health, that we seem to lack the resources to overcome.
I obtained my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Durham, with a thesis entitled ‘Action and Necessity: Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty” and the Foundations of Ethics’. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the relationship between language, action, and normativity in ethics, and my approach to this area of philosophy draws in particular on Wittgenstein, Anscombe, and Schopenhauer. I have recently published on the topic of deep disagreements in ethics from a Wittgensteinian perspective, as well as the idea of liminal statuses in bioethics as a response to conceptual uncertainty.
Research Interests
History of philosophy; Moral philosophy; Applied ethics; Philosophy of religion