Roberto Merrill is a political philosopher working on distributive justice, liberal neutrality, republicanism, and contemporary debates on universal basic income and predistribution.
He is Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minho (Portugal), where he also directs the MA in Political Philosophy. Since 2022, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Research Committee on Political Philosophy of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).
His research combines normative political theory with institutional analysis, focusing particularly on the moral and political foundations of basic income, democratic equality, and the future of work.
He has coordinated several competitive research projects funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), including UBIEXP (2018–2021) and UBIECO (2023–2024), and has developed sustained international collaborations with scholars at Oxford, Sciences Po, McGill, and other institutions.
He is the author and editor of several books, including:
Basic Income Experiments: A Critical Examination of Their Goals, Contexts, and Methods (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
Political Neutrality: A Re-evaluation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Rendimento Básico Incondicional: Uma Defesa da Liberdade (Almedina, 2019, Portuguese Society of Philosophy Prize)
His current research develops along three interconnected axes:
(1) equality and institutional design (basic income, predistribution, future of work),
(2) liberal neutrality and republican political theory, and
(3) love, partiality, and relational equality.
📍 Braga, Portugal
📧 roberto.merrill@elach.uminho.pt