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I am Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor at Johns Hopkins University, cross-appointed to the William H. Miller III Department of Philosophy and the Berman Institute of Bioethics and with a secondary appointment at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I initially moved to the US in 2017 as a visiting research scholar to Princeton University's Program in Cognitive Science. Until then, I had lived most of my adult life in the UK. I completed my BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and was a fellow of All Souls College for many years. I also worked for a decade as an assistant team therapist at the Oxford Complex Needs Service, a National Health Service specialist service for people with personality disorders and complex needs.
My research is highly interdisciplinary: I tend to explore philosophical questions that arise out of clinical practice and related sciences, and I work on topics across philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, moral psychology, practical ethics, and criminal and mental health law and policy. I also aim for much of my philosophical work to have wider academic and public relevance.
My book What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction will be published by Princeton University Press in 2026. It argues for a new paradigm for addiction that is both humanistic and heterogeneous, integrating addiction science with philosophy, clinical practice, and the psychology and voices of people with addiction themselves. My previous work on addiction has been published across a range of venues, including Mind & Language, Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Hastings Center Report, The American Journal of Bioethics, Neuroethics, Nature Neuropsychopharmacology and Psychopharmacology. Together with Serge Ahmed, I edited The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction and I am a member of Marco Venniro's lab.
I have also worked to articulate an idea of responsibility without blame derived from my clinical experience working with people with personality disorders and complex needs. Together with Nicola Lacey, I am currently working on a book about responsibility without blame and the criminal law. I designed an e-learning that is freely available for anyone interested in learning more about responsibility without blame and developing their ability to work and relate effectively with people with personality disorders and complex needs. What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction discusses responsibility without blame in relation to addiction.