My research focuses primarily on twentieth-century French phenomenology and existentialism; feminism; and ethics; I have published most extensively on Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I enjoy exploring metaphilosophical questions about philosophy and literature, philosophy and feminism, and philosophy and theology. Other interests include moral formation, ethical exemplars, and conceptions of love, sin, freedom and liberation.
Before joining Regent’s Park College I taught at King’s College London, the University of Hertfordshire, and St Peter’s College, Oxford.
My role in College
I am Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy and Director of Studies in Philosophy.
I teach undergraduate papers in Post-Kantian Philosophy (Nietzsche, Sartre), Feminist Theory, Moral Philosophy, Ethics, and Christian Moral Reasoning. I also teach a masters option paper on the Philosophy and Feminism of Simone de Beauvoir for the Humanities Division’s MSt in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and supervise BPhil and DPhil research.
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Selected Publications
Books
- Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). Translations available in Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish; Russian forthcoming.
- with George Pattison, The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).
- Sartre and Theology (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2017).
- Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Articles and Research Papers
- ‘Femininity, love, and alienation: the genius of The Second Sex’, Journal of the British Academy, 12(1-2) (May 2024): 1–26.
- ‘Beauvoir and Sartre’s “Disagreement” about freedom’, Philosophy Compass, 18(11) (November 2023): 1–14.
- 'Existentialism and Exemplars’, Educational Theory, 73(5) (October 2023): 762–781.
- ‘Literary Interventions in Justice: A Symposium’, with Rafe McGregor and Karen Simecek, Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics LVIII/XIX(2) (2021): 160–178.
- 'Master, Slave, and Merciless Struggle: Sin and Lovelessness in Sartre’s Saint Genet’, Sartre Studies International, 25(1) (2019): 22–34.
- ‘Sartre: An Augustinian Atheist?’, Sartre Studies International, 21(1) (2016): 1–20.
- ‘Past Her Prime? Simone de Beauvoir on Motherhood and Old Age’, Sophia, 53(2) (2014): 275–287.
- ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: Mystical Atheist or Mystical Antipathist?’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 5(2) (2013): 159–168.
- Book Contribution - 'Early Existentialisms’, in the Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy, ed. Daniel Whistler and Mark Sinclair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).
- Book Contribution - ‘Libérer l’imagination : L’émancipation dans la pensée de Simone de Beauvoir’, in La fabrique des sociétés, ed. Catherine Courtet, Mireille Besson, François Lavocat, and François Lecercle (Paris : CNRS Editions, 2024).
- Book Contribution - 'Preface’, to In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff: Philosophies, Encounters, Friendship, ed. Pamela Sue Anderson and Michèle Le Dœuff, London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
- Book Contribution - 'Introduction’ to Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. Ros Schwartz (London: Penguin Classics, 2023).
- Book Contribution - 'Expectant Anxiety in The Second Sex’ in Simone de Beauvoir: A Toolkit for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Liesbeth Schoonheim, and Karen Vintges (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).
- Book Contribution - 'Divine Justice’, in Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, ed. M. Sellers and S. Kirste (Dordrecht: Springer, 2022).
- Book Contribution - 'Pamela Sue Anderson ’in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
- Book Contribution - 'Simone de Beauvoir’, in The Philosopher Queens, ed. Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting (London: Unbound, 2020).
- Book Contribution - 'The Life and Work of Simone de Beauvoir’, Philosophy Bites interview with Nigel Warburton in Women of Ideas, ed. Suki Finn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Book Contribution - 'Beneath the Surface: Whose Phenomenology? Which Art?’, in Louise Nelstrop and Simon Podmore (eds), Mysticism, Art and Articulation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
- Book Contribution - '“A Perpetually Deceptive Mirage”: Blaise Pascal and Jean-Paul Sartre on the Sinful (No)Self’, in Self or No-Self?, Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Ingolf Dalferth and Marlene Block (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
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See also