Research so far
I have many philosophical interests ranging from Metaethics and Political Philosophy to Epistemology and Philosophy of Language and Mind. My work so far has found a niche at the intersection of these seemingly diverse areas of philosophy by focussing on the relationship between believing and imagining. My PhD project focused on how it impacts our understanding of: beliefs, imagination's contribution to knowledge, motivation, and fictional engagement.
I also have papers at different stages of editing about:
* The counterfactual imagination as a skill, and how it is honed and developed through fictional engagement.
* Sarah-Jane Leslie's proposal to address prejudice via our use of generics.
* Memory's relationship with imagination.
* How to account for pretence.
Contact me if you would like to discuss any of these topics.
Prior Research
My training prior to the PhD mainly focused on Philosophy of Mind, Logic and Philosophy of Language. I am especially interested in what Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever have called 'Bad Language' (see OUP) and in how speech acts help to construct social reality.
My MLitt with SASP (funded by The Philosophical Quarterly) allowed me to develop other interests, such as how best to answer the normative question (why should we obey moral laws and consequently, what is the best theory of morality?). I wrote my MLitt dissertation (with Distinction), supervised by Sarah Broadie, on Christine Korsgaard's thesis that ties morality's ruling to the constitution of our selves.
As an undergraduate, I was particularly interested in the self and indexicality. I worked on these topics respectively with Simon Prosser (during an URIP research internship funded by the University of St Andrews); and Derek Ball and Ephraim Glick. My final year dissertation evaluated David Lewis' argument that attitudes de dicto are essentially de se. It was awarded the Gray Prize for best undergraduate dissertation in Philosophy at St Andrews.
