Research

I am pursuing two interrelated research programs at the intersection of social/political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and ethics. The first develops new frameworks for understanding complacency, responsibility, resistance, and epistemology within marginalized communities. The second examines how power dynamics shape bioethics, as well as tech and AI ethics. 

Feel free to contact me for articles you cannot access or for drafts of work in progress. 

Publications

1. “The Moral Obligation to Resist Complacency about One’s Own Oppression.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 11(2), 374-392, 2025. (Winner of the 2024 Abraham J. Briloff Prize in Ethics)

Abstract: While philosophers have highlighted important reasons to resist one’s own oppression, they tend to overlook the phenomenon of complacency about one’s own oppression. This article addresses this gap by arguing that some oppressed agents are obligated to resist complacency about their own oppression because failing to do so would significantly harm themselves and others. Complacent members of oppressed groups fail to resist meaningfully, are self-satisfied, and are epistemically culpable. I contend that focusing on the obligation to combat complacency is useful for at least two reasons. First, complacency about one’s own oppression is a distinctive phenomenon that warrants separate philosophical attention. Second, focusing on the obligation to resist complacency helps analyze an undertheorized group of oppressed agents by challenging the binary understanding of power prevalent in the literature on the duty to resist, thereby sharpening philosophical accounts of resistance and filling a gap in a prominent well-being-based theory of resistance. 

2. “Complacency on Campus: How Allies Can Do Better.” (With Kurt Blankschaen). In College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues that Affect You, 2nd ed. Edited by Bob Fischer. Oxford University Press, September 2020.

Abstract: What does it mean to be a good ally to the LGBTQ community? Does it count if you attach a rainbow pin to your backpack or post occasional messages of support on social media? We argue that in order to be a good ally involves avoiding the vice of complacency and that allies need to ask themselves two distinct, but related questions: (1) Who are you an ally to?; (2) How are you an ally? While reflecting on these questions helps allies examine what they have or have not been doing so far, these questions point towards future action by encouraging allies to consider what else they need to be doing to help and who else they need to help.  

Selected Work in Progress

Dissertation

My dissertation examines the moral responsibility, vices, and moral competence of individuals who are privileged in some aspects of their identities and oppressed in others. Chapter one, adapted into a publication (2025), argues that privileged oppressed agents are obligated to resist complacency about their own oppression because failing to do so harms both themselves and others. Chapter two, “Glorified Vices: A Feminist Case for Consequentialist Virtue Ethics,” examines how oppression distorts moral evaluation by introducing what I call “glorified vices”—traits exhibited in the name of resistance and survival but that ultimately manifest in oppression-reinforcing actions. I defend a consequentialist account of virtue that evaluates traits by their outcomes and argue that glorified vices are often mistaken for virtues due to the absence of a consequentialist framework attuned to oppression and a lack of attention to power dynamics within oppressed groups. Chapter three, “Moral Responsibility under Oppression: Does Moral Impairment Entail Moral Incompetence,” challenges dominant assumptions about the relationship between moral competence, responsibility, and agency, arguing that morally impaired agents can still retain moral competence and responsibility. Chapter four, “Disclosure as Resistance: A Nonideal Theory of Genetic Medicine,” applies the frameworks developed in earlier chapters to bioethics, showing how the moral complexities faced by privileged oppressed agents play out in the context of genetic disclosure. Using BRCA gene mutations as a case study, I argue that social identity can shape whether one has such a duty and suggest that privileged oppressed agents may bear a stronger obligation to disclose, which can function as a form of resistance to their own oppression. 

An extended abstract of my dissertation is available at the end of my CV.