My doctoral research asks what disability is, what it should be, and how we get there. I defend a radical social constructionist account of disability, on which to be disabled is to be subordinated in virtue of being believed to have a defective body. This is set against both the traditional medical and social models of disability, as well as more moderate social constructionist views, and draws on contemporary ameliorative conceptual engineering strategies.
My work is funded by an AHRC Studentship from the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. I am supervised by Alex Gregory at Southampton and Havi Carel at Bristol.
I'm interested in most aspects of disability, but I also have broader interests across social & political philosophy, including:
Conceptual engineering – particularly of socio-political concepts, and the politics of engineering
Social ontology & social construction
Speech, harm, violence & oppression
The political thought of J. S. Mill