Faculty Members
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The FPRG's core members are: Areas of Feminist Research: Social and Political Philosophy, Normative Ethics, Applied Ethics My engagement with feminist thought, and with questions of sex and gender, is longstanding. My earliest publications addressed problems in feminist ethics, and I have recently returned to this area of study to examine the issue of assisted reproductive technologies in the context of socio-economic inequalities between the global North and South (specifically, the phenomenon of “reproductive tourism”). The tensions between feminism and multiculturalism — i.e., between legal sexual equality, and religious freedom and accommodation of cultural minorities — has also been an important topic in my research. In addition to my 2006 book on this subject (Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States), I have written about the attempt in 2010 to ban the niqab (face veil) in Québec. My writing in this area is greatly influenced by postcolonial thought, critical race theory, and feminist writing on “intersectionality”. I also recently co-edited a volume of essays on the contemporary British philosopher Onora O’Neill.
Areas of Feminist Research: Epistemology, Philosophy of Science. I am an analytic philosopher. My main research interests are epistemological, but my philosophical point of view is feminist. My personal commitment to feminism was borne from the shock of the range and depth of global gender inequality and a desire to do something about it. My philosophical interest in feminism, however, is motivated by theoretical reasons. I am persuaded by the feminist notion that our philosophical theories come up short when we fail to account for our own standpoint as well as that of the subject of inquiry. Thus, whether I am investigating the conditions of justified belief, taking up questions about epistemic responsibility, or exploring the epistemology of recalcitrant emotions, my theoretical starting point is with a socially situated subject and our everyday epistemic practices. This feminist perspective has resulted in important and novel results in epistemology in the pioneering work of Lorraine Code, for instance, and more recently in Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice. I hope to be able to contribute to this rich and flourishing research tradition. Areas of Feminist Research: Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Science, Bioethics, Women's Health I explore how medical knowledge is constructed (using experimental and epidemiological methods), amalgamated (systematic reviews, meta-analyses, consensus statements, clinical guidelines), and interpreted, understood, and applied by clinicians, policy makers, and patients. These inquiries into medical epistemology contribute to feminist philosophical investigation into how women’s bodies are defined and treated within the biomedical context (see Goldenberg 2010b) and women’s corporeal experience of health and illness (2010a). Furthermore, addressing the gaps in our knowledge base of women’s health stands to improve women’s health care.
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Areas of Feminist Research: Social and Political Philosophy (esp. French Feminist Thought), Environmental Philosophy My present research interests are in the area of political theory and post-structuralist thought. I am thinking through the ways in which our dominant conceptual heritage has framed ethical and political questions, including both how the issues are seen and how particular solutions to these issues are presented as real, viable possibilities for change and resistance. My work is primarily conceptual but has points of insertion in familiar ethical and political questions, including perennial feminist questions about oppression and domination, access to resources, health and power. I have written about abortion and surrogate motherhood. I also work on environmental issues such as just distribution of waste, ecosystem health, and animality. Areas of Feminist Research: Early modern philosophy, Locke, early modern women philosophers, history of ethics, feminism (historical and contemporary) My area of expertise is British philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a special emphasis on women philosophers of this period. Through my research, I hope to bring women's intellectual contributions into the philosophical canon. I have published on Anne Conway and Catherine Trotter Cockburn, and plan to continue working on these and other women (including Lady Mary Shepherd), who made significant contributions to philosophical debates of their time. I am also interested in the history ethics, and particularly the sentimentalist philosophers of the eighteenth century.
Areas of feminist research: social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, philosophy of medicine, ethics I'm interested in egalitarianism, broadly conceived. Much of my work has focussed on institutional inequalities, particularly those that are informally rather than formally institutionalized. I understand institutions as systems of rules; informal institutions are social patterns of rule-following behaviour in which the rules are widely understood and followed but not formally codified as laws, by-laws, policies, procedures, and so on. Language, friendship and etiquette are largely informal institutions. My particular interest is in informally institutionalized forms of social inequality such as sexism and racism, in the forms of both discrimination and privilege. I'm also interested in the development of radical egalitarian political thought, beginning with heretical pre-Reformation religious sects, continuing through the development of liberalism in the seventeenth century, the revolutions of the eighteenth century, the rise of socialism, the gradual extension of the franchise, abolitionism and the woman's rights movement in the nineteenth century, and into the equality-seeking movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. |