Research areas

I am a moral and political philosopher. My academic interests are in political philosophy, social philosophy, and applied ethics. I think and write about topics such as distributive justice, economic philosophy, health ethics, health care priority setting, health inequality, discrimination, immigration, and the value of childhood play. I have a background from philosophy and political science and did my PhD in political science on justice in health care.

I teach political philosophy, political theory, social philosophy, ethics, meta ethics, and all kinds of applied ethics. I am happy to supervise student papers and theses on any of those topics. I also occasionally teach methodology, sociology, and human rights courses.

I think philosophy should be both critical and truth-seeking. Most of my work takes form as ideal theory, exploring moral and political ideals with the purpose of criticizing existing practices and institutions, and identifying new ways forward. Being a truth-seeker is not always fun. I am normally a jolly person, but if ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile right off my face.

Currently, I am particularly interested in:

Sufficientarianism as an ideal of distributive justice

The standard view in the distributive justice literature is still egalitarianism – that an equal distribution of justice-relevant goods and opportunities is intrinsically important for justice. As an alternative, some philosophers propose sufficientarianism – that justice is concerned with giving everyone enough, not necessarily an equal amount. As part of my research, I have made significant contributions to the development of novel sufficientarian theory, and this part of my work is still ongoing.

Inequality in health

Health inequality is a major social and political problem. We all have an idea of what it is and why it is problematic. From a moral philosophical perspective, however, it can be quite difficult to pin down exactly when and why inequalities in health are ethically problematic. What is it, more precisely, that makes health inequality unethical, when it is? Is it about health inequality or health care inequality? Is it that health inequality is unjust? If so, is it about distributive justice, relational injustice, discrimination, or epistemic injustice? We need more philosophical inquiry into the ethics of health inequality, and I pursue that goal in part of my research.

Discrimination and stereotypes

Discrimination, understood as comparative differential treatment of particular social groups, occurs in many parts of society. Often, this involves social navigation in reference to stereotypes (e.g., about gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomics). Sometimes this is justified, but other times it amounts to unjust (direct or indirect) discrimination. However, what makes social navigation in reference to stereotypes unjustly discriminatory is a tricky moral philosophical question. Some of my research is about that question and tries to come up with an answer.

I am currently Head of the Values and Welfare Research Group, University of Southern Denmark. Here, we work on philosophical questions and problems that arise in relation to values and welfare in society. We are always interested in hosting visiting scholars and having presentations from external scholars working on similar issues. And we welcome all postdoctoral candidates with an aspiration to join our research group on a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship. Should you have any interests on that, please contact me, and I’ll be more than happy to assist you. We have excellent research support to assist you in writing an application.