Hannah Maslen

Hannah Maslen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ethics, working on the Oxford Martin Programme on Mind and Machine. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at New College. Hannah’s academic background is in philosophy, psychology and law: she received her BA in PPP from Oxford in 2007, her MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Oxford in 2008, and her DPhil from Oxford in 2011.

Hannah’s current research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of various brain intervention technologies. The Oxford Martin Programme on Mind and Machine is an interdisciplinary project, involving collaboration between neuroscientists, engineers, computer scientists, and ethicists to work on developing and applying technology that will allow the observation of and intervention in brain function. Advances in understanding how the brain works are rapidly leading to new possibilities for intervention in brain function and the capacity for brains and machines to talk to each other directly is fast becoming a very real possibility. This raises profound ethical issues related to understanding behaviour and potentially manipulating it, so called ‘mind control’.

Previously, Hannah worked on the NWO-funded project ‘Enhancing Responsibility: the Effects of Cognitive Enhancement on Moral and Legal Responsibility’. She also continues to write on topics in sentencing and penal theory and has a book on remorse and retribution in preparation for Hart Publishing.