I'm interested in ethics and social/political philosophy, especially with regards to sport and work. While we tend to think of many core aspects of these social structures as uniform, one major aspect of my work lo investigates how they are crucially multidimensional. For example, sport is often misunderstood as uniformly and fundamentally about competition while ignoring the different social roles in which sport finds itself; this muddies our normative understanding of issues as diverse as doping, college athletics, and gender categorization. With regards to work, labor unions are often misunderstood as uniformly and fundamentally about contracts; this ignores the diverse way in which workers historically have and contemporarily continue to organize unions outside the a collective bargaining framework. Further exploring the diverse ways in which sport, work, and other such social structures can be is needed not simply for better understanding the phenomena in question but also for normative guidance in the relevant domains.
Below you can find some selected works in progress and my publications. My CV can be found here.
Selected works in progress:
Beyond Contract Unions – Better Understanding the Diverse Union Landscape
There is a growing movement in the US of workers joining together in unions that don’t follow the typical National Labor Relations Board collective bargaining model, yet still making meaningful workplace changes. Despite this, the labor literature seems to largely focus on the more recognizable collective bargaining style unions, to its detriment and the detriment of those involved in the labor movement. In this paper, I offer a framework for better recognizing and understanding the diverse union landscape, both for the metaphysical question of identifying when something is a union and for the normative question of evaluating something qua union. This framework is made up of three dimensions: 1) democratic member control, 2) aim of improving workplace conditions, and 3) engagement in collective action. Once we better understand how diverse the union landscape can be, we can better engage with pressing questions in and around labor unions.
Abolish American College Football
American college football plays a big role on many college campuses, but there are questions about its fittingness for institutions of higher education. One line of criticism against American football in general is that it causes long-term degenerative brain damage. While I agree that such harms are sufficient to abolish American football itself, there are a range of responses people give in defense. Accepting these common defenses, as we will for purposes of this paper, will nonetheless be insufficient for defending institutions of higher education from sponsoring American football. This is because the brain harms of American football undermine the plausible primary purpose(s) of institutions of higher education; as such, we ought to abolish American college football.
Publications (if you hit a paywall and lack institutional access, please feel welcome to let me know):
"A Sporting Case for Inclusion in High School Sport" The Journal of Ethics. (2025)
"Rethinking Doping" Fair Play (2020)
“Too Much Playing Games – A Response to Kretchmar” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2020)
"On Being Part of a Game" Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (2020)
"Pre-Game Cheating and Playing the Game" Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2019)