‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ (Socrates)
‘Philosophy begins in wonder’ (Plato)
‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ (Mahatma Ghandi)
Experience is not just a mental and conceptual matter alone, it is already an embodied experience, where we are ‘thrown’ (Heidegger) into a specific set of circumstances without our consent. Our thrownness and attachment to being-in-the-world and its particular circumstances that shape our existence is primary and needs to be revealed before it is freely chosen and re-imagined.
This understanding of applied philosophy came out of phenomenology and later post-structuralism, and led to a desire to reveal different modalities of our embodied difference at the circumstantial extremes. I have been drawn to what disrupts and irrupts our ways seeing, being and belonging; often being drawn to the extremes of embodied difference, connection and disconnection to attempt understanding.
Here is a more formal list of most of my contributions, a few of which are still works in progress. See my short academic CV for further details.
- The Sublime and the Ridiculous (MA Thesis)
- Heritage and a sense of place (Ph.D.)
- Experiences of amputees with phantom limb and self-demand amputees (Research Report)
- Ethical justification for self-demand amputees (book chapter and article)
- A stoic defence of physician assisted suicide (Research and article)
- Imagining human enhancement: whose future, which rationality (Article)
- Bar-coded children – Inclusion of children on National DNA database (Research and article)
- Reflections on sectioning and anorexia (Two separate discussion articles)
- The case for reasonableness and fairness in mental health provision (Joint article)
- Trust in healthcare (Co-authored book)
- What is bioethics – notes towards a new approach (Research and article)
- Vulnerable bodies: new perspectives on disability (Monograph)
- Embodying loss and the puzzle of existence (Book chapter)
- Research on the recently dead (Research and article)
- Is posthumous harm possible (Research and article)
- Remembering and disremembering the dead: posthumous harm and redemption over time (Research and monograph)
- Solidarity during the time of COVID-19 (Article)
- Writing to my future self with dementia (Research and invited website page)
- A relational understanding of dementia (Research and article – in progress)
- Biocentric Solidarity and lifeboat earth (Article – in progress)
- Towards the idea of unconditional forgiveness (Article – in progress)
My philosophical research and formal outputs have been an attempt to re-imagine how we might live better lives at the extremes. As such, I would describe myself as quiet activist as well as an applied philosopher who has been most deeply influenced by classical and continental philosophical traditions.