My philosophical work sits at the interface of philosophy of language, applied ethics and philosophies of medicine and birth.

My doctoral work focusses on the way language is used to shape the boundaries of permissibility and to constrain the ability of people to refuse unwanted touch during childbirth. Over the course of my PhD I have been supervised by Dr. Lucy McDonald, Prof. Elselijn Kingma and Dr. Elsa Montgomery.

I am particularly interested in how we can learn about refusal of (and consent to) intimate touch in the healthcare context by drawing on theories about sexual refusal and consent.

My doctoral research offers novel philosophical accounts of permission requests and refusal as normative acts. It goes on to apply this analysis to the childbirth context in particular, showing how these accounts can illuminate how people’s refusals of unwanted touch can fail, even in contexts of positive relationships of care and where the law requires positive consent for touch to be permissible.

My research has been supported by doctoral funding from the Society for Applied Philosophy, the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Aristotelian Society, and King’s College London.

Beyond my PhD, I am extending my work to consider the specific ethical issues which arise when healthcare is mediated by interpreters. I suggest that we need to think about more than mere linguistic accuracy in such cases. We also need to focus on how people’s entitlements to speak are promoted and silenced across entire interactions. This approach would allow us to understand in more nuanced ways the different ways in which people in healthcare systems – whether they are patients, clinicians or interpreters – may be silenced or otherwise wronged, and what systems and the law should do in response.

I also have interests in the relationship between refusal and consent, in particular for young people making decisions about medical care, and in cases in which a person’s (legal) mental capacity is in question, which I plan to explore more in the future.