PhD research student, University of Bristol, UK.
Research interests:
Ethical issues around human enhancement technologies and people with disabilities, including the use of PGD to select for or against a particular genetic structure, even where it may be associated with disability.. Closely related areas include wellbeing and the relationship of abilities and opportunites to subjective happiness, adaptation to life circumstances, and to changing abilities, and the role of empirical understanding of wellbeing in ethical theory.
Methodology in bioethics is another current preoccupation. I am interested in the creative process that individual decision-makers go through when they approach an ethicial dilemma or solve an ethical problem. Similarly I am developing a methodological approach based on the creative process that is bioethics and which bioethicists use when working through an ethical problem or set of problems. One aim of this is to get a better understanding of the role of empirical work in bioethics, a topic which is contentious with philosophers and social scientists alike.
Other philosophical interests are philosophy of science and particularly philosophy of physics, the applicaiton and teaching of ethics in engineering, history of philosophy including Leibniz and Descartes, narrative in ethics and the crossover between arts, humanities and science.
More widely physics, engineering, technology and innovation, particularly in automotive and civil engineering, are areas of interest and I retain connections with the motor industry and with civil engineering. Hydropelectic power and electrically powered vehicles are special favourites at the moment. More generally the conflict between much current regulation, especially safety improvements in the automotive industry, and the need to find sustainable energy supplies for a greater proportion of the world's population and to better match our energy needs to the available supply tend to excercise me.