My CV

Download a pdf of my cv here.

Contents


Education

University College London. PhD Philosophy (2002). Thesis title: Morality, Dignity and Pragmatism: an essay on the Future of Morality.
University of Bristol. BA (Hons.) Greek and Philosophy (1994). First Class.

Academic Positions

University College London (2008—)

Professor of Philosophy (October 2019—)
Vice Dean (Interdisciplinarity), Faculty of Arts and Humanities (2015—)
Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy (2014—)
Lecturer, Department of Philosophy (2013–14)
Secondment to Royal Society as Senior Policy Adviser (2011–12).
Lecturer in Philosophy and Health, Joint Research Office (2008–13)

Keele University (2004–8). Lecturer in Ethics.
Birkbeck, University of London (2003–4). Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy.
University of Surrey Roehampton (2002–3). Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy.

Publications

To the extent that copyright allows, these outputs are available open access from the UCL Discovery repository. You can explore my publications in a more interactive way at Google Scholar. Starred items are those that are most significant.

Journal Articles

Chapters in Books

  • Wilson J. (2020) “Philanthrocapitalism and Global Health”, Global Health and Global Ethics ed. Solomon Benatar and Gillian Brock (Oxford: OUP)
  • Wilson J. (2018). “Global Justice”, in Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10443-9.
  • Wilson J. (2014). “Global Health Inequalities and Inequities”, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (4th edition), ed. Bruce Jennings. Macmillan USA, pp. 1347–53.
  • Wilson J. (2014). “Addendum to ‘Research Methodology’”, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (4th edition), ed. Bruce Jennings. Macmillan USA, pp. 2810–11.
  • Kessel A., Wilson J., Abubakar I., Watson J., Pebody R., Zambon R., Amirthalingam G., Kitching A., Ramsay M., Hughes G., Delpech V., Savage E., Desai S., Bloomer E., and Goldblatt P. (2013). “Health Inequalities and Infectious Diseases”, in Davies, S.C. Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, Volume Two, 2011, Infections and the rise of antimicrobial resistance London: Department of Health (2013), pp. 51–62.
  • Wilson J. (2013). “Drug Resistance, Patents and Justice: Who Owns the Effectiveness of Antibiotics?”. In Global Health and International Community: Ethical, Political and Regulatory Challenges (ed. J. Coggon and S. Gola, Bloomsbury Academic), pp. 151–164.
  • ** Wilson J. (2012). “On the value of the intellectual commons”. In New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property (ed. Annabelle Lever, Cambridge University Press), pp. 122–139.
  • ** Wilson J. (2011). “Health Inequities”. In Public Health Ethics: Key Concepts in Policy and Practice, ed. A. Dawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Gopfert M., McLelland N. and Wilson J. (2010) “Maternal Mental Health: an ethical base for best practice”. The Oxford Textbook of Women and Mental Health ed. D. Kohen, chapter 8 pp. 59–71.
  • Wilson, J. (2007). “Rights”. In Principles of Healthcare Ethics eds. R. Ashcroft, A. Dawson, H. Draper and J. McMillan. Chester: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 239–246.
  • Wilson, J. (2007). “Nietzsche and Equality”. In Nietzsche and Ethics ed. G. von Tevenar. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 221–240.

Reports

Reviews

Conference Papers and Invited Talks

“How much ethical weight should be given to reasonable expectations?”, The Ethics and Practice of Disinvestment: On Knowing What Not to Do in Health and Social Care, KCL May 2019
“When does precision matter? Personalised medicine from the perspective of public health”, The Revolution of Personalized Medicine, Pontifical Academy of Science, Vatican City, April 2019.
“Systems theory, systemic injustice, and the dynamics of chronic illness ”, Ethics and Chronic Illness, Queen's University Belfast, September 2018
“Is it unethical to have ‘too many’ or ‘too few’ children?”, Reproductive Health and Parental Responsibility, Roma Tre university, April 2018.
“Between the Nanny State and the Neglectful State”, Expertise, trust and public policy: Centre for Science and Policy Annual Conference, London June 2018.
“Vaccination, solidarity and the social contract: ethically countering vaccine hesitancy”, Vaccines today: Challenges in vaccination delivery and evidence for practice, London January 2018.
“Fairly distributing antibiotic effectiveness”, Priority in Practice, Oxford May 2017.
“Privacy, consent and health data: using health data for secondary purposes ethically, but without consent”, World Congress of Bioethics, Edinburgh, June 2016. I also gave this paper at King’s Colloquium on Philosophy and Medicine, KCL March 2017.
“Can analysing tweets for disease surveillance purposes violate privacy?”, The ethics of secondary use research using clinical tissue and data without patient consent, Edinburgh June 2016.
“The internal and external validity of thought experiments in ethics”, Aristotelian Society, 25 January 2016.
“Improving Equitable Access to health care through increasing patient and public involvement in prioritisation decisions: the case of Cell and Gene Therapies”, Improving Equitable Access to health care through increasing patient and public involvement in prioritisation decisions, Brocher Institute, Switzerland November 2015
“The right to public health”, Perfectionism in Public Health, University of Munster, March 2016. I also gave this as a keynote at UCL Graduate Conference, October 2016.
“Justifying State Health Promotion Activities”, Paternalism Redeemed: Old Ideals, New realities, ENS Lyon, March 2015.
“‘Your friend's husband's co-worker can make you fat’: ethical implications of the contagion model of obesity”, Food Policy between Public Health and Ethical Pluralism, Queen’s University Belfast, March 2015.
“Solidarity, Privacy and Infectious Disease Surveillance”, Solitonomy, Oxford University, Feb 2015.
“Setting Global Priorities: Interrogating Gostin’s Thought Experiment”, A Critical Exploration of Global Health Law, Birmingham November 2014.
“On Justifying Equal Healthcare Entitlements for Undocumented Migrants”, World Congress of Bioethics, Mexico City, June 2014.
“Embracing Complexity: Towards a Translational Bioethics”, World Congress of Bioethics, Mexico City, June 2014. I also gave this at the UCL/KCL Bioethics Colloquium in Nov 2014.
“Embracing Complexity: Theory, Cases and the Future of Bioethics”, Analytic Bioethics in Europe, Ghent University, 28–29 May 2014.
“Who has a valid complaint against Inappropriate Usage of Antibiotics?”, The Ethics of Antimicrobial Resistance, Brocher Foundation, Geneva, March 27–28, 2014.
“The Human Right to Health as a Basis for Obesity Policy”, Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference, Zurich, June 2013.
“The Idea of Public Interest in Sharing Health Information”, Queen's University Belfast, June 2013.
“Global Health Inequalities and Inequities”, Migration and Bioethics: The case of undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, Brocher Foundation, Geneva June 2013.
“Moral Mathematics and the Eradication of Disease”, SIMID, Antwerp, April 2013.
“Ethics and the Eradication of Disease”, Plenary talk at British Society for Parasitology Spring Conference, Bristol, April 2013.
“Intellectual Property Rights and Sustainable Agriculture”, Wageningen University, November 2012.
“How Important is it to Eradicate Polio? Moral Mathematics and the Eradication of Disease”, Vaccination Ethics Workshop, Ruhr-University Bochum, Oct 2012.
“Risks, Hazards, Uncertainty and Inducements in Research”, World Congress of Bioethics, Rotterdam June 2012.
“From the Four Principles to Political Philosophy”, World Congress of Bioethics, Rotterdam June 2012.
“Philosophical Bioethics, Empirical Bioethics and Socially Constituted Values”, The Good Life: Theory and Practice, University of Birmingham, June 2012.
“Market failure, patents and the crisis of antibiotic resistance”, Health Innovation and Social Equity in the 21st Century: A Multidisciplinary focus on health injustices, London May 2012.
“Solidarity and Lifestyle Diseases”, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, July 2011.
“Why It's Time to Stop Talking About Paternalism in Health Policy”, Political Philosophy and Public Health, Keele University June 2011.
“Drug resistance, patents and justice”, Global Health, Global Goods, and International Community, Manchester June 2011.
“Synthetic Biology and Intellectual Property”, SYBHEL Workshop, Bilbao November, 2010.
“Time discounting and medical need: an argument for why the NHS should not pay for patented drugs”, Cardiff University, September 2010, UCL March 2011.
“Health Promotion and the Human Right to Health”, Human Rights and Public Health Ethics: Problems and Prospects, Singapore July 2010.
“Rights, Goals and Health Promotion”, World Congress of Bioethics, Singapore July 2010. I also give the same paper at Roehampton University, March 2010.
“Tradeoffs between incommensurable values”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Invited Lecture, Keele University, Feb 2010.
“Philosophies of `Enough’”, Just Enough: Sufficiency and the Cultural Imagination, UCL, December 2009.
“Adam Smith and Moral Equality”, Workshops in Political Theory 2009, Manchester Metropolitan University, September 2009.
“Liberalism, Respect for Autonomy and Privacy”, European Society For Philosophy Of Medicine And Healthcare Conference 2009, Tübingen, August 2009.
“On the Value of the Intellectual Commons”, Philosophy and Intellectual Property Conference, Institute of Philosophy, London, May 2009.
“Progressive realisation and the human right to health”, The UCL/Lancet Human Right to Health Conference, London, May 2009.
“Daniels and the Social Determinants of Health”, Justice and the Social Determinants of Health, London, December 2008.
“Informed Consent and Autonomy”, AREC Conference, London, October 2008.
“The Primacy of Justice in Public Health Ethics”, Workshops in Political Theory 2008, Manchester Metropolitan University, September 2008.
“Research Exceptionalism”, World Congress of Bioethics, Rijeka, Croatia, September 2008.
“Should We Trust Our Moral Intuitions?”, World Congress of Bioethics, Rijeka Croatia, September 2008.
“Intuitions, Empirical Research and Reflective Equilibrium”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: How Do They Relate?, Amsterdam March 2008.
“Capabilities, Justice and the Social Determinants of Health”, Meeting The Author: Norman Daniels’ Just Health: a Population Perspective, Zurich University Centre of Ethics 2007.
“Could There Be A Right To Own Intellectual Property?”, Workshops in Political Theory 2007, Manchester Metropolitan University.
“Rethinking Autonomy in Bioethics,”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Public Lecture, Lancaster University, February 2007.
“Money, Voluntariness and Inducements”, Informed Consent: Some Critical Voices, Keele University, February 2007.
“Why Seek Informed Consent for Neonatal Screening?”, International Experts’ Panel on the ethical implications of expanding the Dutch Neonatal Screening Program, Leiden, 2006.
“Justice, Rights and Intellectual Property”, Priority in Practice 8, University College London, 2006.
“Transhumanism and Equality”, World Congress of Bioethics, Beijing August 2006. (I also gave a longer version of this as a public lecture at Roehampton University, 2006).
“Informed Consent: Against Respect for Autonomy Justifications”, Rethinking Informed Consent: the Limits of Autonomy, Sweden 2006.
“Moral Equality: Human, Posthuman and Nonhuman”, Northweb 2006, Lancaster University.
“Microsoft on Copyright: an Ethical Analysis”, Ethicomp Conference 2005, Sweden 2005.
“GM Foods: patently wrong?”, Food Ethics and the Public’s Health, Keele University 2005.
“Is it Immoral to Illegally Copy Software?”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, University of Surrey Roehampton (2005).
“Nietzsche and Equality”, Friedrich Nietzsche Society Conference, Sussex University, September 2004.
“How Much Can the Constructivist Construct?”, keynote speech, UCL Undergraduate Conference (2004); I also gave this paper the Birkbeck Cumberland Lodge Conference (2003).
“Why should I be a moral person?”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Public Lecture, University of Surrey Roehampton (2004).
“Normativity”, Birkbeck Philosophy Society (2004).
“The role of Philosophy in Applied Ethics”, Surrey Ethics Forum (2003).

Media

Grants and Contracts Awarded

  • NIHR UCLH BRC. Dimensions of hope in dementia. (2018–19), (£34,000, Co-PI).
  • NHS Digital, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytic Data Usage for Adult Social Care Prevention and Intervention, (2018–19), (ethics lead/Co-I, £76,500)
  • UCL Grand Challenges Human Wellbeing Small Grant (2015), “Dying Well”: Enacting Medical Ethics. (£2000, main collaborator).
  • EPSRC IRC in Early-Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Diseases exploratory projects grant, (2015–16) Building and Maintaining Public Trust in Early Warning Sensing Systems for Influenza. (£81,576, principal applicant)
  • UCL Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects Scheme (2013–15), The Human Right to Health and Priority Setting in Health Care. (£77,389, Joint principal applicant).
  • UCL Grand Challenges Global Health Small Grant (2013), “Examining the feasibility and ethical acceptability of providing cause of death information to families of the deceased in rural Nepal via Mobile InterVA”. (£5000, main collaborator).
  • Society for Applied Philosophy Event Funding (2013), for Postgraduate Bioethics Conference (£1500, joint principal applicant.)
  • Wellcome Trust Society and Ethics Small Grant (2013), for Postgraduate Bioethics Conference (£3175, collaborator)
  • Secondment to Royal Society to be co-leader of Science as an Open Enterprise project, 2011–12, £45,594.
  • UCL Enterprise Secondment to the Royal Society (2011), to contribute to Science as an Open Enterprise project (£9748, joint principal applicant)
  • UCL Grand Challenges Sustainable Cities Small Grant (2011), Planning the Healthy City: soft-normativism as an approach to problems of value pluralism and complexity in built environment interventions(£3494, principal applicant).
  • AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (2010–13), Liberty and Public Protection in Infectious Disease Policy (principal applicant), £61, 773. Partner organisation was Health Protection Agency, then Public Health England.
  • UCL E-Learning Development Grant (2010), £1300 (joint principal applicant)
  • Wellcome Trust Symposium Grant (2010), Human Rights and Public Health Ethics (co-applicant, £13,343)
  • British Academy Overseas Conference Grant (2010), £600
  • British Academy Travel Grant (2005), £300.

Honours, Esteem Indicators and Other Professional Activities

  • Member, National Data Guardian's Steering Group (2018—)
  • Member, National Data Guardian’s Panel (2016—).
  • Associate Editor, Public Health Ethics (2015—).
  • Member, Faculty of Public Health Public Health Ethics Committee (2017—).
  • Expert member, NHS Digital Independent Group Advising on the Release of Data (2017)
  • Independent Member, NHS Digital Data Access Advisory Group (2015–7).
  • General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Independent Advisory Group, Ethicist 2013–15.
  • Mentor, B-Mentor (2015–6).
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2015—).
  • External Examiner, BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Oxford (2013–6).
  • External Examiner, MSc Global Health and Social Justice, King’s College London (2013–7).
  • External Examiner, Philosophy Programme, Roehampton University (2011–14).
  • External Advisor, Philosophy Programme, Roehampton University (2009).
  • Research Degree Examiner: Birkbeck College (MPhil Stud, 2014, 2017); Birmingham (PhD, 2017); Kings College London (MPhil Stud, 2014, PhD 2015); LSE (PhD 2017); UCL (PhD, 2015, 2016, 2018); Wageningen University (PhD, 2013, 2019).
  • Coordinator of the International Association of Bioethics’ Philosophy and Bioethics Network (2007—).
  • Member of Generation Next organising committee for 2012 World Congress of Bioethics.
  • Executive committee member, Worshipful Society of Apothecaries Faculty of the History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy (2012–14).
  • Referee for the following journals: American Journal of Bioethics, Bioethics, BMC Medical Ethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Clinical Ethics, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Erkenntnis, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Ethics and Global Politics, European Journal of Human Genetics, Hastings Center Report, Health Care Analysis, Health Economics, Policy and Law, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Public Health, Journal of Social Philosophy, Journal of Value Inquiry, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Mind, Monash Bioethics Review, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Philosophy & Technology, Political Studies, Public Health Ethics, Research Ethics, Res Publica, Social Theory and Practice, The Lancet, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.
  • Referee for grant proposals for Wellcome Trust, Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), and book proposals for Cambridge University Press, Palgrave Macmillan and Policy Press.
  • S.V. Keeling Scholarship, University College London (1994–7).
  • University Prize for Greek, University of Bristol (1993).
  • Member of British Philosophical Association, Society for Applied Philosophy, British Society for Aesthetics.

Conferences, Workshops and Lecture Series Organised

  • Valuing Health: Well-being, Freedom and Suffering, UCL June 2015.
  • Priority in Practice: 10th Anniversary Conference (with Laura Valentini), UCL September 2013.
  • 7th UK Postgraduate Bioethics Conference (with Isra Black and Lisa Forsberg), KCL May 2013.
  • Time, Harm and Uncertainty: Themes in the Ethics of Infectious Disease, UCL December 2012.
  • Human Rights and Public Health Ethics: Problems and Prospects (with Angus Dawson), Singapore July 2010
  • New Directions in Bioethics workshop, UCL June 2009.
  • UCL/Lancet Human Right to Health Conference (with Jonathan Wolff), UCL May 2009.
  • Methodology in Bioethics (with David Hunter), major session at the International Congress of Bioethics, Rijeka, August 2008.
  • Children, Parents and Public Health conference, Keele University, March 2008.
  • Issues in Healthcare Ethics, Law and Philosophy, Royal Institute of Philosophy Public Lecture Series, Keele University (2005–2008).

Teaching

UCL (2008—)

Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Health. Combined masters level and third year undergraduate course. Examines a number of topics in public health ethics, including the use of QALYs for resource allocation decisions, health inequalities, the ethics of health promotion and the ethics of infectious disease control. (2009–present)
Global Justice and Health. Combined masters level and third year undergraduate course. Examines the nature of our global health duties. When are global inequalities in health unfair, whose duty is it to rectify them, and which types of solution for improving global health are both effective and ethically acceptable? (2011–17)
Illness. Masters level course. Explores the experience of illness, focusing in particular on the relationship between subjective and objective: how rich and socially embedded interpretive responses to the experience of illness, can and should be brought into dialogue with biomedical, philosophical, and sociological understandings of the same phenomena. (2016–present)
Aesthetics. Second year undergraduate course. Provides an introduction to some key topics issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. (2013–14, 2016–17, 2018–19)
Research in Philosophy, Justice and Health. Graduate level research seminar course. Focuses on a different theme each year. Topics have included Ethics of Climate Change (2015), and Privacy (2016).
Political Philosophy. Second year undergraduate module. Examined Rawls's liberal egalitarian A Theory of Justice and Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. (2013–14)
Philosophy and Ethics of Translational Clinical Science. Masters level course. Examined how healthcare research should be conducted and funded, including topics such as the nature of evidence in medicine, informed consent, patient and public involvement in research, the patent system, and publication ethics. (2008–12)
Ethics. Masters level course. Focused on the ethics of enhancement, examining topics such as whether there is a moral difference between therapy and enhancement, the ethics of choosing children, moral status, and challenges of regulating of new technologies. (2009–12)

PhD Supervision

  • asper Littmann (2014). Antimicrobial resistance and distributive justice.
    Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Experimental Medicine, Kiel University (CAU), (2014—). Strategic Advisor to the President, Robert Koch Institute (2016–18). Currently Director for the Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance at the Norwegian National Institute of Public Health.
  • Gabriele Badano (2014). Deliberative Democracy, Public Reason and the Allocation of Clinical Care Resources.
    Postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences And Humanities (CRASSH), (2015–18). From September 2018: Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of York.
  • Alexandre Sayegh (2016). Justice in a non-ideal world (secondary supervisor).
    Postdoctoral Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies (2016–18). SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science at McGill University (2018–19). From 2019, Assistant Professor in Political Theory, Department of Political Science, Université Laval.
  • Polly Mitchell (2018). The construction of well-being (primary supervisor).
    Postdoctoral fellow, “‘But why is that better?’ An investigation of what applied philosophy and ethics can bring to quality improvement work in healthcare”, KCL (2018–20)
  • Ben Fardell (2019). Non-Basic Needs: Making Space for Incommensurability in the structure of Well-Being (primary supervisor).

Keele (2004–8)

I taught across the full range of the six Applied Ethics MAs the Centre for Professional Ethics offered, and also on the Professional Doctorate in Medical Ethics. This included moral theory, and topics in medical ethics such as informed consent, competence and decisionmaking, euthanasia, research ethics, health inequalities, resource allocation and the rule of rescue. For my last two years at Keele I taught predominantly on the MA Medical Ethics and Law (of which I was also the course director), the distance-learning MA Research Ethics, and the DMedEth in Medical Ethics.

Birkbeck (2003–4)

  • First Year undergraduate lectures in Greek Ethics (4 Lectures).
  • Second and Third Year undergraduate Lectures in Aesthetics (15 Lectures), Ethics (5 Lectures), and Nietzsche (5 Lectures).

University of Surrey Roehampton (2002–3)

  • First year undergraduate courses in: Practical Ethics; Introductory Logic; Modern Philosophy; Philosophy of Mind; History of Ethical Thought.
  • Second and third year undergraduate course in Contemporary Ethical Theory.

Administration, Enabling and Leadership

UCL

  • Member, Member, UCL Artificial Intelligence Steering Group (2018–present)
  • Member, Arts & Humanities Increment Panel (2018–19).
  • Member, Academic Board Governance Committee (2017—).
  • Vice Dean (Interdisciplinarity), Faculty of Arts and Humanities (2015–19).
  • REF 2021 Impact Lead, Philosophy Department (2017—)
  • Co-Director, UCL Health Humanities Centre (2015—).
  • Director, Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health (2013–2015).
  • Co-Director, MA Health Humanities (2016—present)
  • Director, MA Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Health (2012—present).
  • Steering Committee member, India Voices (2017)
  • Steering Committee member, Centre for Behaviour Change (2016—)
  • Steering Committee member, Institute of Digital Health (2015—)
  • Executive Group member, Science, Medicine and Society Network (2013—2016).
  • Affiliate Tutor, Philosophy Department (2014).
  • Steering committee member, Institute for Human Rights (2010–present).
  • Executive Group member, UCL Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing (2010–16).
  • Steering Committee member, Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health (2008–13).
  • Member of UCL Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities (2009–12)
  • Assessments coordinator for MSc Clinical and Experimental Medicine (2008–13).

Keele (2008–12)

  • Director of the MA Medical Ethics and Law. (2006 – 2008). At the time, this was the largest postgraduate ethics course in Europe, with 100 part-time students.
  • Member of Centre for Professional Ethics’ Strategic Planning Group (2005–8).
  • Chair of the Law School Research Ethics committee. (2007–8)
  • Member of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee. (2006–8).
  • Member of Law School Postgraduate Taught Courses Steering Committee (2007–8).
  • Director of Research Ethics Training. (2006).
  • Member of committee for Research Centre for Law, Ethics and Society. (2007–8)
  • Director of the MA in Cancer and Palliative Care (2005–6).
  • Centre Workload Allocation Coordinator (responsible for assigning tasks to colleagues, and ensuring a fair division of labour). (2005–8)
  • IT, Library and Web Coordinator for the Centre for Professional Ethics. (2005–8).