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Professor of Ethics, Keele University

My research engages with issues in ethics, especially bioethics, from philosophical, regulatory, and practise perspectives; often linking issues in metaphysics with problems of ethics. My major research topics include questions on the margins of life (genetics, reproductive technologies, and end-of-life ethics), identity and personhood, concepts in bioethics (trust, hope, the nature of disease, illness and vulnerability), moral authority and autonomy, extended decision-making, and the nature of expertise in ethics. I also engage in the critical ethical evaluation of legislation and policy on matters of biomedical and research ethics.

My work divides into three main areas:

Biomedical Ethics and Research Ethics:
End of life ethics, reproductive ethics, concepts in bioethics, and the nature of bioethics.

Ethics and Policy/Law:
Ethical appraisals of legislation and policy governing medicine in areas such as advance directives/proxy decision-making, mental health, and end of life care.

Metaphysics, philosophical and applied:
Realism and anti-realism debates; conceptual analysis.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Ethics, Keele University

Education

  • 2001 
    University of Leeds, PhD