‘Neurodivergent Rights’, presented at AAP Conference at University of Western Australia, July 2024

This paper aims to provide an account of the range of moral rights that neurodivergent people have, the grounds of these rights, and what recognising these would involve for contemporary states. There has been very little philosophical work on neurodivergent rights and their grounds. We argue that a range of neurodivergent rights are grounded in our more general rights to a live a life that we take to be good or meaningful or to be the life that we ought to life, sometimes thought of as rights to live with integrity. As we explain these more general rights to live with integrity are fundamental liberal rights that are articulated by a wide range of liberal political philosophers, but they are also the grounds of other minority rights. Drawing on a range of neurodivergent people’s testimonies we argue that rights to live with integrity ground a range of neurodivergent positive and negative rights to not be interfered with in a variety of ways but also to be provided with a variety of goods that many (but by no means all) neurodivergent people need in order to live with integrity. 

‘Conceptualising ‘care’: mental health law in Victorian Hansard, 1958-2014’, presented at AAHPSSS at the University of Sydney, November 2023

How to characterise psychiatry is a source of contention. Some argue there is a central tension between psychiatry’s perceived role of delivering care to patients and the legal powers that enable members of the profession to use coercive approaches to certain categories of these patients. However, how this tension between care and coercion has been understood and articulated by the legislators granting these powers to psychiatrists through modern mental health laws is under-examined. This talk discusses the concepts that underpin this legislation and looks at how they have evolved alongside legislative change in the Victorian context. I will address this through examination of the history of psychiatric legislation in Victoria, Australia, as articulated by policymakers between 1958 and 2014, looking specifically at the concept of ‘care’ in relation to the granting of coercive legal powers to psychiatrists.

‘Care and Coercion’ presented at the HPS Seminar Series at University of Melbourne, October 2023

Confirmation talk outlining rationale and methods of the PhD project along with its historiographical and theoretical positioning.

Stories of Gender in West Yorkshire at Leeds City Museum in Central Leeds, October 2022

I co-ran an exhibition with Leeds Museums and Galleries. The exhibition featured interactive oral histories from trans people in West Yorkshire, clothing, badges, and placards from the West Yorkshire Queer Stories collection, as well as zines and other work by local trans artists, an interactive ‘My Gender Mixtape’ activity, and interactive video interviews with trans philosophers about gender identity and gender. The exhibition used materials from the West Yorkshire Queer Stories Archive and Cat Lane’s Breaking the Binary exhibition. It was attended by over 400 people over two days.