I recently received my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Maryland, College Park.  My dissertation, The Structure of Responsibility: Symmetry, Agency, and Undermining Factors, advocates an attractively simple compatibilist account of responsibility.  This fall I’ll be a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland; after January 1st, I’ll be a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carleton College.

My research interests are in Ethics and Moral Psychology, especially issues in Moral Responsibility and Action Theory. In addition to extending some of the work in my dissertation, I’m currently most interested in the connections between what grounds our practices of excusing agents from blame and the grounds for the wrongness of actions. I believe some rather common assumptions in discussions of the former conflict with rather common assumptions in discussions of the latter, and I’m keen to discover whether such conflicts can be resolved or what further problems they may pose.

I also retain interests in political philosophy, especially the topics of authority, sovereignty, and political obligation.