My research interests primarily fall into either philosophy of art or the history of philosophy. In the history of philosophy, I have been working lately on the role that love plays in the moral philosophies of a seemingly disparate group of figures: Hegel, Murdoch, Weil, and Beauvoir. My AHRC-funded doctoral research at Kings College London looked at a figure for whom the connection between art, ethics, and politics was central: the 19th century Russian philosopher Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky. Belinsky’s idea that art could function as a form of philosophy and activism continues to inform my approach to contemporary puzzles in aesthetics. In particular, he was interested in how art could overcome populist political movements, how it might overcome epistemic obstacles that journalism and philosophy face, and how it functions in a well-rounded education.

I’ve continued my doctoral research in Russian philosophy with a particular focus on the relationship between Russian and German philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I’m currently working on a paper that connects the Russian humanist tradition with German idealism through the concept of ‘humanity’ in both bodies of work. I’m also interested in the aesthetic theories of all these figures, particularly Kant, Murdoch, and Russian philosophers like Belinsky and Berdyaev.

In contemporary aesthetics, I am interested in the ways in which artworks intervene in our intellectual, moral, and political lives. Recently, I have been working on several papers which look at the intersection between art and journalism which I argue generates a helpful framework for understanding the distinctive contributions artworks make to political understanding. I have published on the philosophy of fashion and how the artistic value realised in our fashion choices can impact our ethical flourishing. I have also published on the cognitivism debate, addressing how we might talk about learning from literature based on existent empirical research.

Publications:

‘More Than Metaphor: Understanding Through Literature’, Debates in Aesthetics 19 (1):37-53.

 ‘Value, Virtue, and Vivienne Westwood: On the Philosophical Importance of Fashion’, Open Philosophy 6 (1):481-95 (2023), DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0250