Research
Broadly speaking, I am interested in ethical issues related to practice and policy in the areas of animal and environmental ethics. I take an interdisciplinary approach to my research, drawing heavily upon philosophy, but also relevant fields outside philosophy, such as veterinary science, political theory, and sociology.
Animal Ethics
Within animal ethics my primary focus is on the moral nature of the relationship between animal companions and their caregivers, which I identify as a form of moral partiality, as well as practice-based issues concerning animal companion caregivers (sometimes referred to as “pet owners”). My work in this area has been published in venues such as the Journal of Animal Ethics and the Journal of Value Inquiry. I have presented work on animal ethics to professional philosophical audiences at the APA 2025 Central Division Meeting, the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, and the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. Aside from concerns related to animal companions, I am interested in a wide range of ethical issues concerning animals, including factory farming, wild animal welfare and intervention, the use of animals in biomedical research, food ethics, and interspecies justice.
Environmental Ethics
Within environmental ethics my primary interest is on issues related to practitioners and policy. Recently, this has taken the form of work on issues related to marginalized communities, emerging technologies, environmental justice, and embedding ethicists in practice. While philosophers have a rich and diverse history of addressing theoretical issues in environmental ethics, there is relatively little work done on issues related to practice and policy. My co-researcher on this project is Dr. Matthew Kisner from the University of South Carolina. Our recent presentations include work on embedding ethicists within environmental practice at the APA 2025 Central Division Meeting and work on defining environmental justice communities for use in policy at the APA 2025 Pacific Division Meeting, the latter of which has been published in Ethics, Policy and Environment.
Below you can find a list of publications and papers in progress or under review. To request a paper draft, please contact me through the Contact page.
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
“Who Qualifies as Environmental Justice Communities? Ethical Guidance for Environmental Justice Practitioners”, Ethics, Policy and Environmental (forthcoming). (Co-authored with Dr. Matthew Kisner)
United States environmental justice policies confer special benefits and consideration to “environmental justice communities,” but the qualifications for this category are often unclear. This creates practical challenges for environmental justice practitioners in deciding what communities qualify. This challenge is moral because it concerns who deserves consideration and benefits. This paper provides environmental justice practitioners with moral guidance for navigating these challenges. The paper focuses on the most pressing issues for practitioners deciding qualifications for the purpose of determining eligibility of benefits: (a) what are ethically permissible criteria for determining qualification; and (b) ethically how should these criteria be employed?
“A dog is man’s best friend” is a well-known and widely used phrase, but are we right in thinking that dogs are our friends? If so, do we owe our dogs what we owe our friends? Aristotle recognized three different kinds of friends: friends of utility, friends of pleasure, and friends of virtue. I suggest that dogs can meet the conditions necessary for entering into the first two kinds of friendship, but that there is a potential moral hazard in thinking about our relationship with dogs in these terms. It is unclear whether dogs can meet the more stringent conditions necessary to enter friendships of virtue. Furthermore, the moral responsibilities that animal companion caregivers take on appear to be different than those of friendship. For these reasons, I challenge the notion that a neo-Aristotelian conception of friendship best captures the relationship we have with dogs.
Many animal ethicists have shifted from using the term ‘pet’ to the term ‘animal companion’, but what exactly is an animal companion? Arguably, the most comprehensive description of what an animal companion is comes from Gary Varner who builds upon the work of Deborah Barnbaum. I examine what I call the Barnbaum-Varner definition of ‘animal companion’. I suggest that while the definition mostly captures what we think of when we think of an animal companion, there are potential philosophical issues which may impede constructive use of this definition. I offer a revised version of the Barnbaum-Varner definition to avoid these issues.
What is the basis of our obligations to our animal companions? This is an important question for practical reasons, as the relationship that many individuals have with their animal companion is amongst the most intimate of relationships they share with a non-human animal. It is also important for theoretical reasons. One of those reasons is that our commitments to animal companions may appear to present a kind of puzzle. If we think that we have moral commitments to animal companions that we do not have to other animals, such as livestock or free-roaming animals, what could explain this? I argue that the explanation for this difference in moral commitments is the result of the special relationship we have with our animal companions. More specifically, the basis of our moral commitments to animal companions are like those incurred by parents. Further, it is argued that causing the existence of or voluntarily taking on commitments of care for especially vulnerable and dependent sentient organisms implies robust responsibilities aimed at nurturing and promoting individual flourishing. This conclusion has implications regarding several related moral issues, such as whether animal companions require a moral education, what end-of-life commitments animal companion caregivers have, and whether it is justified to feed our animal companions other animals or let them engage in predation. Further, these issues are of practical interest to animal companion caregivers, law makers, and veterinarians, as well as being of theoretical interest to legal scholars and ethicists.
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Works-In-Progress and Under Review:
“Beyond the Clinic: Extending the Model of Clinical Ethics Fellowships to an Environmental Context” (Co-authored with Dr. Matthew Kisner)
While the embedded ethicist model is well accepted within medicine, no such model is formally recognized in environmental ethics. Given that there is a need for such ethicists to work closely with community members and practitioners, a shift in academic institutions in response to climate change should be encouraged. One example of an embedded environmental ethicist involves the Thriving Community Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC) created through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The goal of the TCTAC was to support environmental justice communities who faced barriers to seeking federal funding to address environmental justice issues. Part of the role of the ethicist embedded within this framework is to work collaboratively with local communities and practitioners to co-create knowledge. A secondary function of the embedded ethicist is to use their experience to inform and develop new research on environmental justice. Utilizing the model present in medicine and the example of embedding an ethicist within the TCTAC, we will suggest that a similar model can be implemented within environmental enterprises and, perhaps, beyond.
“Flourishing Companions: Meeting the Needs of Non-Human Animal Companions”
What does it mean to promote the flourishing of an animal companion? Adopting a view of flourishing that involves meeting species-specific and individual-specific needs, this paper examines several key flourishing-related areas – nutrition, sexual and reproductive autonomy, and death and dying – to better understand what it means to promote the flourishing of animal companions.
“Moral Partiality and Non-Human Animals: The Case for Inclusion”