Katharina Bernhard
Katharina is trained in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Social Philosophy, and Epistemology of Science. Her PhD research investigates epistemic dimensions of values in science, specifically of inductive risk value judgements. To that end, her research draws on Bayesian and non-formal epistemology as much as on Feminist Philosophies of Science. Katharina argues that recent developments in epistemology can lend support to the long-standing feminist claim that objective scientific research sometimes requires of the scientist, qua scientist, to make (appropriate) non-epistemic value judgements. In future research, Katharina wants to explore how meeting this requirement well warrants the epistemic trustworthiness of scientific claims.
Viviane Fairbank
Viviane’s primary research is on logical expressivism, the normativity of logic, and the notion of objectivity in the philosophy of logic. She is also interested in feminist philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of science, and she previously worked as a magazine journalist with a focus on journalism ethics.
David MacDonald
David’s PhD is on the ethics of sex; primarily questions on the nature of consent. David’s thesis seeks to describe in more detail what our duties of due diligence are to respect others’ consent, and to define when agents are responsible for negligently believing that their sexual partner is consenting when this is not the case. David’s other research interests include consent more generally, particularly when used for theories of political obligation/legitimacy.
Colin McLean
Colin’s research focuses primarily on the limits of public policy within broadly liberal societies. His thesis concerns the justification of policies that explicitly aim to influence the normative commitments of persons, with reference to topics such as the foundations of liberal political morality, the nature of liberal freedom, and the significance of value pluralism.
Miguel De La Cal Moreno
Miguel works on issues in political philosophy and climate ethics. He has a strong interest in feminist philosophy, revolutionary traditions, and social epistemology. He is currently researching how climate change affects our conception of a good life, and how protests can help us find meaning in these troubled times. When he is not doing philosophy he enjoys watching (and discussing!) movies, climbing, and taking care of community gardens.
Johannes Nickl
Johannes‘ main research interests lie in the field of Kant’s ethics. In his PhD thesis, he focuses on Kant’s conception of conscience. He aims at shedding light on the question to what extent Kant’s ethical theory relies on conscience and how the latter bears a positive effect on an agent’s morality. Related to this topic, he is particularly interested in the role of moral feelings (e.g., sympathy), questions of moral motivation, and the demandingness of moral duties to oneself. His further interests include the ancient Greek philosophy, normative ethics, and legal philosophy.
He is supervised by Jens Timmermann and Simon Hope.
Paul Retallick
Paul’s PhD focuses on the limits of extreme demand: the view that we are morally obligated to give all non-essential resources to charity. He is also interested in Effective Altruism, Longtermism and normative ethics. He is haunted by the idea that metaethical non-cognitivism is true and makes all of his work redundant.
Amiya Hashkes
Amiya’s main research interes
ts are epistemology, ethics, and the intersections and parallels between the two. Her doctoral dissertation is supervised by Jessica Brown, and concerns the relationship between understanding and epistemic responsibility; Amiya believes that the responsibility we bear for our beliefs has consequences for a number of debates in social epistemology, such as the conditions under which we ought (or ought not) to accept testimony. Other topics she is working on include epistemic challenges in metaethics, and the ways in which epistemic fallibilism can be used to respond to a variety of philosophical challenges
Lara Scheibli
Lara’s main research interests lie in epistemology, feminist philosophy, moral philosophy, and the intersections of those fields. Her doctoral thesis on the epistemology of #BelieveWomen is supervised by Jessica Brown. Lara is also interested in the ethics of consent, the history of utilitarianism, and social ontology.
Darcey Merison
Darcey’s main research interests are Plato and Aristotle, and her PhD focuses on Aristotelian moral psychology: she is particularly interested in the relationship between emotions and persuasion, and how this relationship intersects with the cultivation of virtuous citizens.
Dante Clementi
Dante is a PhD candidate in the School of Divinity, writing a thesis on the relation between language and silence in Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy. Aside from Kierkegaard, Dante’s interests include the respective intersections between art and ethics and between the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy, the experience of value, and meaning in life and its relation to selfhood, the transcendent, and beauty
Patrick J. Winther-Larsen
Patrick’s area of specialization is moral responsibility and he wrote his master’s thesis on the ethics of third-party blame. For his doctoral project, he plans to investigate this topic further. He also has an interest in the history of philosophy (particularly the works of Plato and Kant), as well as the philosophy of art.
Jacob Librizzi
Jacob Librizzi specializes in metaethics, rationality, and the nature of normativity in non-realist frameworks. His doctoral project focuses on distinguishing metanormative constructivism as a genuine alternative to both realism and expressivism. Central to this project is the nature of conferred properties and evaluative classification. Related interests include Kantian ethics, constitutivist strategies for normative explanation, and what justifies universalist commitments in moral thinking.
Percy Zhao
Percy’s research primarily focuses on moral philosophy, and animal ethics in particular. His Ph.D. project is on the meta-ethical question of the grounding for moral status, and how to understand the moral status of animals on that basis.