Contact
Biography
I'm a research fellow in Philosophy working on the Wellcome-funded project 'Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare' (EPIC). The project is split between the Universities of Bristol, Birmingham and Nottingham; the Nottingham team is made up of me, Dr Ian James Kidd and Dr Alice Monypenny. Before moving to Nottingham, I worked across two research projects at Birmingham: (i) Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology (PI Matthew Broome) and (ii) Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare (PI Havi Carel). Before that, I was a postdoc at Linköping University working on a large-scale project on Long Covid. My PhD in Philosophy was awarded in 2022, by the University of York.
Expertise Summary
My work spans the philosophy of psychiatry, emotion, social epistemology and phenomenology. I am working primarily on affective experience in chronic illness, and a little bit on grief. I am particularly interested in questions that arise at the intersection between philosophy, psychiatry and neurology, and I'm trying to encourage philosophers of medicine and phenomenologists to care about Functional Neurological Disorder (things like tics, tremors, fatigue and seizures without so-called 'organic' basis).
I am fascinated by the promise of phenomenology in helping us to better understand the experience of these disorders. The bodily, existential and affective dimensions of these experiences are rich and complex, yet under-studied. I am also interested in how the frameworks of 'epistemic injustice' and 'affective injustice' can help us to capture some of the less obvious ways in which people with these conditions are socially marginalised.
Teaching Summary
I have taught in the following areas:
- Philosophy of psychiatry
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy of grief
- Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Perception
- Epistemology
- Logic (introductory)
- Artificial Intelligence Ethics (introductory)
Research Summary
Some of the current topics I am working on include:
- The affective, bodily and existential dimensions of functional seizures
- How we empathise with experiences which are so radically different from our own (say, profound grief or mental illness)
- How shifts in the sense of belonging can underpin psychiatric illness
- How exactly we give and deny 'uptake' to people's emotional expressions
- Emotion regulation in illness
- Forms of grief over non-death losses and their social uptake
Past Research
My PhD was on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). I carried out a phenomenological study into experiences of fatigue, and looked at how this informs contemporary philosophical, scientific and wider social discussions about the condition.
After this, I worked on Long Covid for a little bit.
Work on grief has been a constant, rumbling presence since my PhD years, when I worked on a project 'Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience'. It turns out that grief is everywhere.