Keynote Speakers // Hauptredner

Emeritus Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy, University of Oxford

Jonathan Wolff (FBA) is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blatavnik School of Government, former Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy and Public Policy at the School and a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College. He is formerly the inaugural Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy having been appointed Blavatnik Chair in Public Policy at the School in 2016. Prior to joining Oxford, Jo was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCL. He is a political philosopher who works on questions of inequality, disadvantage and social justice. He has published a book City of Equals (OUP 2024) co-authored with Avner de-Shalit.

His work in recent years has also turned to applied topics such as public safety, disability, gambling, and the regulation of recreational drugs, which he has discussed in his books Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge 2011, second edition 2019) and The Human Right to Health (Norton 2012). Earlier works include Disadvantage (OUP 2007), with Avner de-Shalit; An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP, 1996, fourth edition 2023); Why Read Marx Today? (OUP 2002); and Robert Nozick (Polity 1991), together with several edited collections. His recent work has also discussed social equality, poverty, and social exclusion, as well as methodology in political philosophy. He is now working on questions of belonging, nationalism, and civil society. 

He has had a long-standing interest in health and health promotion, including questions of justice in health care resource allocation, the social determinants of health, and incentives and health behaviour. He has been a member of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, the Academy of Medical Science working party on Drug Futures, the Gambling Review Body and the Homicide Review Group. He has been an external member of the Board of Science of the British Medical Association, and a Trustee of the Responsible Gambling Trust, for whom he chaired their research committee. He Co-Chaired the WHO Working Group on the Ethics and Governance of the Access to COVID Tools-Accelerator, and continues to work with the WHO. For many years he wrote a regular column on higher education for The Guardian. He was elected to the British Academy in 2023, and is the in-coming President of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Professor (Former), Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai

Kanchana Mahadevan, former Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai, continues to contribute to philosophical pedagogy as visiting faculty at institutions in Mumbai. She received her doctorate in philosophy on Jürgen Habermas’ communicative ethics in 1993 at the University of Georgia, USA. She writes on care ethics, feminism, critical theory and aesthetics from a postcolonial perspective. Her recent research on care ethics explores its critical potential in relation to health care work (nursing practices in particular) and the cosmopolitan character of care. 

Her book "Between Femininity and Feminism: Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives on Care" (Indian Council of Philosophical Research in collaboration with DK Printworld New Delhi) examines the relevance of Western feminist philosophy in the Indian context. She has coedited a volume of philosophical and psychological essays on the pandemic entitled The COVID Spectrum: Theoretical and Experiential Perspectives (Speaking Tiger Publications, New Delhi). She is the Editor of the University of Mumbai’s interdisciplinary humanities online research journal Sambhashan. Her recent work attempts to situate the care theoretical perspective in the Indian context, with special reference nursing policies and practices. She is also working on the significance of gender in debates on the secular and the postsecular.