We are delighted to announce that we have two new members of academic staff joining the Department in September.
Dr Ahmad Elabbar is taking up the post of Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Science and Technology. Dr Elabbar completed degrees in Physics and the Philosophy of Physics, before joining our Department as an HPSM MPhil student and then undertaking a PhD with Professor Stephen John. His PhD thesis, 'Justice as an Ideal for Climate Assessment', developed the first account of justice in the creation and distribution of climate knowledge, significantly advancing the literature on the role of values in science, and revealed that climate assessments are where much of climate governance actually takes place. Over the next few years Dr Elabbar will continue to research the historical structural causes, and potential remedies, of the evidential inequalities on the impacts of climate change. Dr Elabbar is looking forward to his new role in the Department, and especially to working with students on a range of HPS topics, building in particular on the excellent work produced in the Department on environmental and climate science.
Dr Harriet Fagerberg will be joining us as the new Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Life Sciences, also known as the Hatton Lecturer. Dr Fagerberg holds a BA in Philosophy, Psychology and Politics, an MA in Philosophy of Psychology, and a PhD in Philosophy jointly awarded by King's College London and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in association with the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Her doctoral thesis, entitled 'Disease, Dysfunction and the Brain', developed an account of the nature of medical disorder and applied it to the brain. Dr Fagerberg is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in our department, having previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Dr Fagerberg has broad interests in the philosophy of biology, medicine and psychiatry, including the nature of biological function, social kinds and natural kinds, and the relationship between mental illness and neurological illness. She is looking forward to teaching on the MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society and to convening the departmental reading group in Philosophy of Climate and the Environment.