I work mainly in ethics, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of language. My work also frequently draws on sociology (especially the work of Erving Goffman – see my Aeon summary of his ideas here).
In very general terms, I am interested in the ethical dimensions of everyday interactions and relationships. My research interests fall into three broad categories.
- Ethics of personal relationships
- Intimate abuse. I am currently working on a large project examining the nature and normative profile of intimate abuse, a topic which has been regrettably neglected in philosophy. This work involves bringing together philosophy of love and feminist philosophy. I am particularly interested in:
- how features of intimate relationships facilitate abuse (see, e.g., this chapter)
- the distinctive wrongs intimate abuse involves
- lying in romantic relationships, especially in relation to the UK Spy Cops scandal (with Cathy Mason)
- Love and intimacy. I am also fascinated by the nature of intimacy and love in general. I first got into this topic by writing about flirting. With Cathy Mason I am developing a knowledge-based theory of love.
- Guilt and shame. I have a longstanding interest in negative reactive attitudes like resentment, guilt and shame, as well as in objective attitudes like disgust and hatred. I have published papers about shaming and dehumanization.
2) Philosophy of the internet and social media
I don’t think we’ve yet come to terms with quite how radically the internet has changed how we interact with one another and the ethical questions these changes raise. I’ve already written about likes, emoji, and a phenomenon known as ‘context collapse’, and I’m currently writing papers about:
- Catfishing, and how dating apps and social media exacerbate lookism and our obsession with appearance (in connection with the Ethical Dating Online network)
- what it means to communicate transparently, especially online, and especially in the context of political communication
3) Social philosophy of language
- Speech and social power. I have written a range of papers exploring the nature of speech and its relation to social power (especially relating to gender). I am interested in how uneven power dynamics shape our conversations with one another and enable behaviour like gaslighting and exploitation (see, e.g. this paper). I am also interested in the role of the hearer in communication and in how hearers’ responses to others’ speech can shape the meaning of that speech. I defend my collaborative theory of speech here.
- Speech and normativity. I am very interested in the normative dimensions of communication. In current work, I defend the idea that speech acts necessarily enact normative changes. I’m especially interested in the connections between speech and moral normativity, as well as in speech acts which seem to create changes in social status but not changes in moral status (like illegitimate orders or immoral promises). My work on language often brings together speech act theory with the literature in moral philosophy on normative powers.
Before moving to KCL, I was a Junior Research Fellow in philosophy at St John’s College, Cambridge from 2020 to 2023. During this time I co-convened the CRASSH-funded Research Network, Illuminating Friendship, together with a social anthropologist, Susan MacDougall, which explored friendship and intimacy from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
I have a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, and undergraduate and master’s degrees in philosophy from Oxford. My PhD project, ‘Speech, Sex, and Social Norms’, supervised by Rae Langton and Clare Chambers, explored different ways norms of gender and sexuality are enforced through speech.