Current Teaching

Lent 2024:

• PPR571x/371x Reading Philosophy in Progress: Welfare and the Self

My Role

My main role is teaching, researching, and writing philosophy.

I am Lancaster's Academic Lead to the NWCDTP, which distributes funding for PhD study in the arts and humanities in universities in the North West.

Career Details

I did an undergraduate degree in philosophy at York (1996), the BPhil at Queen's College Oxford (2000), and a PhD in political philosophy at York (2004). Before starting my current job at Lancaster in 2007, I taught at the universities of York, Leeds, and Glasgow.

Research Overview

I am a philosopher interested in the self; in good and bad lives it might lead (aka welfare, well-being); in its reflexive powers and practices; in the roles of experience, reflection, and institutions in its development and success; and in how to do philosophy so as to advance our understanding of these issues.

These interests have lead me to think, write, and teach about capitalism and anarchism; utopias, dialogues, and autobiographies; pleasure, self-discovery, and self-realization; self-knowledge, self-interpretation, and self-command; the lives and experiences of monks, soldiers, hermits, and solo travellers; and the transformative effects of work and war.

My recent work has been philosophy of and through autobiography, and as part of it I have published articles in journals including Inquiry, Ratio, Res Publica, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and a book, Good Lives (Oxford University Press 2021).

I am currently writing a book about the relations between philosophies of the self and philosophies of welfare, making use of speculative fiction about alien and artificial selves. I'm blogging about this, mostly in support of a special subject on the draft, at https://welfareandselfbook.wordpress.com/.

PhD Supervision Interests

The good life/well-being/welfare. The self. Life in time. The philosophy of war. The philosophy of work and the workplace. Literature and/as philosophy.