Us — Philosophy & Medicine

Our Research

Philosophy of Medicine

Within philosophy of medicine, our research spans issues such as concepts of health and disease and the role of facts and values in these, medical epistemology and evidence based medicine, the ethics of belief in medicine, and the philosophy of neuroscience and psychiatry. See below for more.

Philosophy of Pregnancy, Birth
& Early Motherhood

In addition to our research focus on traditional issues and debates in philosophy of medicine, the project also has a growing focus on philosophical issues surrounding pregnancy, birth and early motherhood, the metaphysics and pregnancy, and their intersection with health.

Want to work with us?

We welcome requests for supervision in areas related to our research. For initial inquiries, contact your intended supervisor or get in touch with us.

Elselijn Kingma

Peter Sowerby Chair in Philosophy and Medicine

Elselijn's research interests are in the philosophy of medicine, especially concepts of health and disease; the epistemology of evidence-based medicine; and the role of values in medical evidence and clinical decision-making. She also focuses the philosophy of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood: especially the rights and obligations of pregnant and birthing women, as well as those of their health care providers; the nature of pregnancy; and applications such as artificial gestation and contract pregnancy.

David Papineau

Professor of Philosophy of Science

David Papineau has a range of interests in the philosophy of medicine. He has worked on concepts of health and disease, especially in connection with mental disorder. He is also interested in the methodology of medical research and in particular in experimental and observational techniques for establishing causal efficacy. Associated with this he has written about the ethics of clinical trials and the nature of informed consent.

Alexander Geddes

Research Associate

Alexander’s research interests revolve around the metaphysics of human life. His work addresses questions concerning our persistence, our minds and our origins, as well as related issues in epistemology, metaphilosophy and the philosophy of biology. As part of the ERC-funded BUMP (Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy) project, he is working on the mereology of pregnancy, immunological accounts of biological individuality, pluralism about biological individuality, and fission.

Silvia Camporesi

Professor of Philosophy & Visiting Research Associate

Silvia’s research sits at the intersection of philosophy of medicine and bioethics, as I explore the norms and values underlying the construction of sports categories, especially for bodies that deviate from the 'norm.' This includes bodies that require assistive technologies to compete and bodies that do not fit into the male and female binary. Over the years, I have worked on intersex athletes and athletes who utilize prostheses for running or jumping, aiming to understand the strategies employed by athletics sports federations and the Court of Arbitration for Sport to preserve the status quo and uphold the binary division of athletics.

Hamed Tabatabaei Ghomi

Sowerby Lecturer in Philosophy of Medicine

Hamed is specialised in general philosophy of science, philosophy of complexity, and philosophy of medicine, and he is also competent in a range of other philosophical areas including epistemology, and some topics in the Arabic/Persian tradition. His research divides into two areas: first, he studies the metaphysics of the emergent features of complex systems and the best approaches to understand, describe, and engineer such features. Second, He uses computer simulations to investigate the consequences of meta-scientific assumptions on scientific practice and results, particularly in the context of medical research and reasoning.

Zsuzsanna Chappell

Visiting Research Associate

Zsuzsanna's current main research interest is in the ethics and social philosophy of mental health and illness. Her work is based on her belief that our social attitudes towards experiences of madness and mental illness contribute to discrimation, exclusion and injustice towards those living with mental disorders. She is also working on a project on the philosophy of deliberate self-harm. Additionally, she is interested in the way in which minoritised scholars with subject-relevant lived experience can best contribute to academic research and how the epistemic costs and social barriers they face could be reduced.

Harriet Fagerberg

Research Associate

Harriet’s research interests are in Philosophy of Biology, Mind, Medicine and Psychiatry. She is particularly interested in biological function, theories of pathology and disease, and the relationship between mental and somatic disorders. She is currently developing a theory according to which pathological conditions can be understood as a special ‘compounding’ kind of biological dysfunction. Harriet is a GTA and occasional lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine.

Arjun Devanesan

Research Associate

Arjun Devanesan’s research interests are in the philosophy of medicine, biology and probability. His current research project examines the problem of biological individuality as it is applied in pregnancy, the metaphysics of material objects and mereology. He is also interested in medical research methods including medical statistics, clinical trial design and the history of medicine. He is currently working on a project on the history of pharmaceutical medicine at the Royal College of Physicians garden of medicinal plants where he is a Fellow.

Rivkah Hatchwell

Research Associate, Sowerby Scholar

Rivkah’s research interests sit at the intersection of ethics, epistemology and medicine; exploring different methods for making medical knowledge. Her current work focuses on the benefits of a bayesian approach compared to the currently relied upon statistical significance testing. She explores the implications of the bayesian approach for the value ladenness of medical sciences and ultimately for public trust in science. She also has an ongoing interest in the use of equipoise in clinical research.

Rebecca Brione

Research Associate

Rebecca works on reproductive bioethics, with particular interest in harm, autonomy and consent in healthcare. Her PhD research focusses on conceptualising harm in non-consented obstetric intervention. She has a background in research, advocacy and public policy and works closely with leading reproductive justice organisations in the UK and US. She also has a close interest in Court of Protection decisions relating to maternity care. For the 2021/2022 academic year, she holds a Consultant Lectureship in Women's Health at University College London.

Ilana Raburn

Research Associate

Ilana is a medical doctor (graduated 2012) and is training in nephrology. She is particularly interested in the problem of overdiagnosis, and the related issues of overtreatment and medicalisation. She is currently looking into the design of medical tests and misdiagnosis from false positives as well as the use of Bayesian epistemology for both actual and ideal medical diagnosis.

Vanessa Brassey

Research Associate

My research focusses on the malleability and adeptness of our perspective-taking. Particularly, in our imaginative shifts, both in terms of spatial changes (imagine you are looking down on yourself) and temporal changes (imagine you are sat exactly where you are but in 10 years time). I treat these as gateway cases that help us get to grips with empathic shifts. That is, shifts into the shoes of others (whether now or at a different point in time). Understanding these shifts, I argue, contributes to our understanding of art. Because these kinds of shifts enable us, as competent appreciators of art, to disclose the affective content and value of specific works.