Book:
On Taking Offence. Oxford University Press (2023). Available online here: https://academic.oup.com/book/45860?login=false
You can listen to discussions of the book in podcast interviews:
Why? Philosophical Discussions about Everyday Life, Prairie Public Radio
Read about it:
|The p. 99 Test blog
| Institute of Art and Ideas magazine.
Read its reviews:
In Ethics by Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky
In Mind by Cecile Fabre
In Journal of Applied Philosophy by Simon Goldstraw
Or read replies from critics:
Macalester Bell “The emotion(s) of offense and victimhood culture”
Christopher Bennett “Should I get angry, or just take offence”
Richard Child "On the "only joking" defence against offence"
Miriam Ronzoni "Taking Offence as a civic virtue, on and offline”
.
Articles & Chapters:
Together again: The value of encounters, offline, Journal of Practical Ethics. In press (2025).
With Katy Wells. Against parental devotion: On power, friendships, and flourishing, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. (2025)
With Rob Simpson. Hecklers, free speech, and freedom of association. Mind. (2024)
Freedom, spontaneity, and our encounters, Political Philosophy, 1(2) (2024).
The Ethics of Offensive Comedy: Punching Down and the Duties of Comedians. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement. 96 (2024), 81-100.
In defence of taking offence: A reply to my critics. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2024).
In the eyes of the beholders: Microaggressions, lived experience, and the collective. Analysis, 83 (2) (2023), 329–34.
Against visitor bans: Freedom of association, COVID-19, and the hospital ward. Journal of Medical Ethics, 49 (2023): 288-291.
Civic education, moral character, and liberal states. In Doris, J. & M. Vargas (eds), The Handbook of Moral Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Taking offense: An emotion reconsidered. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 49 (2) (2021), 179-208.
With Christian Barry A puzzle of enforceability: Why do moral duties differ in their enforceability?. Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (2021): 229-253.
Justice, feasibility, and social science as it is. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 22 (2019): 27–40.
Microaggressions, equality, and social practices. Journal of Political Philosophy, 26 (3) (2018): 261-281.
Uterus transplants and the insufficient value of gestation. Bioethics, 32 (2018): 481– 488.
Those who forget the past: An ethical challenge from the history of treating deviance. In Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice, eds. David Birks & Tom Douglas. (Oxford University Press, 2018).
How to be a responsibility-sensitive egalitarian: From metaphysics to social practice. Political Studies, 64 (3) (2016): 748-764.
Should fertility treatment be state funded? Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32 (2015): 227- 240.
How to make citizens behave: Social psychology, liberal virtues, and social norms. Journal of Political Philosophy, 22 (1) (2014): 84-104.
Subject of a reply by Eamonn K. Callan. Debate: Liberal virtues and civic education.
Journal of Political Philosophy, 23 (2015): 491–500.
The inegalitarian ethos: Incentives, respect, and self-respect. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 12 (1) (2013): 93-111.
Articles
Why offence is good. Institute of Art and Ideas (2020).
If you care about social equality, you want a big state.Juncture, Institute of Public Policy Research, 23 (2016): 138–144. With Martin O’Neill, Christian Schemmel & Fabian Schuppert.
Rescuing responsibility for the left Juncture, Institute of Public Policy Research, 22 (2016): 298–303
Posts
Why hospitals should not ban visitors. Post, Blog: Journal of Medical Ethics (2022)
Should the state pay for you to have kids? Post Forum for European Philosophy Blog (2015).
I have two research projects underway:
1. Freedom, the values of association, and spaces to associate.
What does a rich and free associational life offer us? What does it require of us, and of our online and offline spaces?
You can read the first publications emerging from this research, ‘Against Visitor Bans’ and ‘Heckling, Free Speech, and Free Association’ Or you can read about a new collaborative project with Prof. Ben Colburn and Dr. Jane Clossick, here: ‘Spaces of Birth and Death’.
2. The ethics and politics of social interaction.
I am beginning work on a new monograph on social equality, the nature of social hierarchy, and the significance of social norms and social emotions.
I am currently writing pieces on the wrongs of sexual advances, the nature of structural injustice, and the right way to conceptualise respect.