I'm Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of
Bristol. I've been at Bristol since 1988. Previous locations include the
University of Essex, the LSE and Magdalen College Oxford. I teach
mainly
political philosophy, though I've been known to lecture on philosophy
of
social science and even on Descartes. My book Rousseau
and The Social Contract appeared in 2003
in Routledge's
Philosophy Guidebooks series.
I was recently (2007-9) President of the Rousseau
Association and am now the organizer of the Association's 2011 Colloquium. Aside
from that, my main research interests are in modern social contract
theory, in theories of justice (especially global distributive justice, including issues concerning territory and migration) and in public justification.
In 2005/6 I was the holder of a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship to work on topics in global justice. Together with Cara Nine of University College, Cork, I'm the holder of a network award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, to work on topic involving territory and justice.
I was until recently the
editor of Imprints:
Egalitarian Theory and Practice, now (2007) in its eleventh year
of publication and before that was once on the editorial committee of
New Left Review, before resigning, along with nearly everyone
else. These days I find the description 'egalitarian liberal'
fits
me better than 'socialist', but there's lots of complicated
autobiographical, cultural and theoretical stuff there which I
won't go into here.
Outside of professional life I'm interested in music and try to get to see Welsh National Opera whenever they come to town but my tastes are fairly eclectic (also ranging from jazz to so-called alt.country: see my gig reviews for Decode magazine). I am also a keen photographer (click on the pictures above for access to my Flickr stream). I'm also an ardent Liverpool fan, though geographical considerations and the poor state of football in Bristol mean that I often go to see Bristol play rugby union.
Some writings available on the web:
