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Profile
I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, where I moved in 2018/19 after receiving my PhD in Philosophy from Yale and spending two years as Bersoff Fellow at NYU.
I specialise in early modern philosophy, with a focus on ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and the intriguing points at which they intersect. I also have interests in feminist philosophy, Cambridge Platonism, the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, and various issues in medieval and Renaissance philosophy.
My current research improbably combines all of these interests by investigating how metaphysical themes are bound up with epistemological and moral themes in early modern philosophical discussions of love and sympathy.
Teaching
I mainly lecture in Early Modern Philosophy and Ethics, though I teach supervisions on a broad range of Papers. Recently taught courses include: Animal Ethics’ (Part II seminar)’, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy (Part IB lectures), ‘Cavendish’ (Part IB lectures), ‘Leibniz’ (Part IB lectures), ‘Introduction to Virtue Ethics’ (Part IB lectures), ‘Mind-Body Problems’ (Part IB seminar), ‘Du Châtelet’ (Part IB lectures), ‘Early Modern Feminisms’ (Part IB seminar), ‘Freedom and Agency’ (Part IB seminar), ‘The Ethics of Knowing’ (Part II Seminar)
Research
The main focus of my research lies in moral, metaphysical, and epistemological themes in early modern philosophy, and in particular on the intriguing points at which they intersect.
In my work on G.W. Leibniz, I investigate central aspects of Leibniz’s theory of knowledge, and show how they underpin his ethics, in particular his claim that morality is grounded in the imitation of divine justice.
Through Leibniz, the philosophy of Cambridge Platonism has become a second focus of my research, in particular the work of female philosophers associated with the group, such as Anne Conway and Damaris Masham. My current research project (“A Force That Binds”) extends those interests by investigating how metaphysical themes are bound up with epistemological and moral themes in early modern philosophical discussions of love.
In my research, I aim to illuminate the historical context, concepts and developments which frame these views, but I also want to draw out their philosophical potential by letting my work be informed by contemporary research.
On a more historiographical level, much of my work aims to probe the historical and systematic boundaries of what is commonly called “early modern rationalism”.
Selected Publications
‘The Primacy of Reason: Contextualising Du Châtelet’s Examens de la Bible.’ In: F. Amijee (eds.)The Bloomsbury Handbook to Emilie du Châtelet,, London/Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
‘The Power of Love and the Force of Reason: Leibniz and Du Châtelet on the Foundations of Morality.’ In: C. Carus & J. McDonough (eds.), Émilie Du Châtelet in Relation to Leibniz and Wolff-Similarities and Differences, Dordrecht: Springer, 2025.
‘Nature’s Poetry and Humanity’s Artifice. Cavendish on the Role of the Imagination in Natural Philosophy’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 77(4) (2024).
‘A Most Subtle Matter: Cavendish’s and Conway’s (Im)materialism’, in: The Routledge Handbook on Idealism and Immaterialism, ed. B. Göcke & J. Farris, London/New York: Routledge 2022.
‘Cavendish on Love and Self-Love’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (2021), 123-145.
‘The Metaphysics of Leibniz’s New System’, in: Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings, ed. P. Lodge & L. Strickland, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, 101-122.
‘Loving the Body, Loving the Soul: Conway’s Vitalist Critique of Cartesian and Morean Dualism’, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 9 (2019): 1-35.
‘Nothing Is Simply One Thing: Conway on Multiplicities in Causation and Cognition.’ In: Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. S. Bender and D. Perler, London: Routledge 2019, 123-145.
‘Reflection, Intelligibility and Leibniz’s Case Against Materialism’, Logical Analysis and the History of Philosophy 21 (2018): 44-68.