Part of the Institute for Science & Ethics

A programme of the Oxford Martin School

Linked with the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and the Oxford Uehiro Centre

SRC in brief:

SRC will use the latest developments in cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and social psychology to understand how moral judgements and intuitions differ among different groups in society, with particular attention to their role in religious conflict.

STAFF

Professor Julian Savulescu (Principal Investigator)

Professor Julian Savulescu is qualified in medicine, bioethics and analytic philosophy. He holds the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and is Director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, Director of the James Martin 21st Century School Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences and Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford, . He is engaged in research, education and stimulating open discussion around the ethical issues arising in everyday life and has worked broadly in the ethics of science and medicine. His main research interests are the ethics of the new biosciences: cloning, stem cells, genetics, artificial reproduction and neuroscience. He established and was Director of the Ethics of Genetics Unit at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne.

Dr. Steve Clarke (Research Fellow)

Steve Clarke is a James Martin Research Fellow in the Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences, and a Research Associate for the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He is on leave from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics in Australia (until 2012) where he is a Senior Research Fellow. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Monash University and has previously held appointments at the University of Melbourne, the University of Cape Town and La Trobe University. Steve is a broad-ranging philosopher who has published in such journals as The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, Philosophy and Technology and the Journal of Risk Research.

CV (MS Word), CV (Adobe Acrobat)

Dr Joanna Burch Brown (Research Fellow)

Joanna Burch Brown is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics (Faculty of Philosophy), and at the Oxford Institute for Science and Ethics. She is also a Research Associate within the Oxford Martin School. Prior to coming to Oxford, she was at the University of Cambridge (King's College), pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the History and Philosophy of Science Department. She has a B.A. from Oberlin College, and an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge. She has worked as a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and has been a Shackle Scholar at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge. In 2003 she received a Compton Fellowship ($40,000) to set up a community gardening project working with refugees and asylum seekers in East London, supported by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. The charity, for which she is now a trustee, has received a number of awards including being awarded five out of five stars and designated a 'Beacon Project' by the Home Office. Joanna's research in philosophy focuses on normative ethics (especially consequentialism) and decision making under uncertainty. As part of the Science and Religious Conflict project, she is working on a monograph exploring the possibility that some styles of religious and normative discourse might have a tendency to make us more vulnerable to various cognitive biases (like confirmation bias) while other styles of religious and normative discourse might help us guard against these biases.

Professor Roger Trigg

Roger Trigg is Senior Research Fellow in the Ian Ramsey Centre, Faculty of Theology, and is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is at present working in a major Oxford research project on the cognitive science of religion, and is also writing a book on religious freedom for Oxford University Press. He has played a leading role in many national and international learned societies, and is currently President of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion. The author of many books across a broad spectrum of philosophy, his latest are 'Morality Matters' (Blackwell, Oxford 2005), and 'Religion in Public Life' (Oxford University Press, paperback edition 2008).

CV (MS Word), CV (Adobe Acrobat)

VISITORS

Dr Pedro Perez

Pedro Perez is a visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate from the University of Valencia, where he is an Assistant Professor in Ethics and Democracy. Following undergraduate study, he completed a thesis at the University of Valencia on Deliberative democracy. Public reason and non-public reasons from the point of view of John Rawls. He is visiting the SRC Project for 1 year from September 2010, funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education.

CV (MS Word)

Dr Helen De Cruz

Helen De Cruz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders, University of Leuven, and a Templeton fellow at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD thesis on the philosophy of mathematics in 2007. Her current interests include philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of religion. On the Templeton fellowship, she investigates the cognitive basis of intuitions in natural theology. Dr De Cruz is visiting the project during the academic year 2011-2012

Webpages: Academia.edu | University of Leuven

Dr Johan De Smedt

Johan De Smedt is a research fellow at Ghent University. His PhD thesis entitled Common minds, uncommon thoughts. A philosophical anthropological investigation of uniquely human creative behavior, with an emphasis on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study was defended in 2011. He will be visiting the SRC project for the academic year 2011-2012. He works on the implications of cognitive science of religion for philosophy of religion, and on the cognitive basis of scientific practice.

Webpages: Academia.edu | Ghent University

ASSOCIATES

Dr Russell Powell: Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University and a former AHRC Research Fellow on the SRC Project (2009-2011). Prior to his appointment at Oxford, Russell was a Greenwall Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. He received his B.A. in philosophy (summa cum laude) from Binghamton University (1999), Juris Doctor (cum laude) from NYU Law School (2002), and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duke University (2008). Russell’s academic interests are wide-ranging and highly interdisciplinary: he has published in areas ranging from political and legal philosophy to the philosophy of science and bioethics, in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Political Philosophy, Biology and Philosophy, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, the Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.

Dr Jessica Butler (Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford)

Professor Tony Coady (CAPPE, University of Melbourne)

Dr Guy Kahane (Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford)

Dr Neil Levy (Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, University of Oxford, and Florey Neuroscience Institutes, University of Melbourne)

Dr Eric Mandelbaum (Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford)

Professor Ingmar Persson (Department of Philosophy, University of Gothenburg and Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford)

Dr Mark Sheehan (The ETHOX Centre and Programme on the Ethics of the New Biosciences, University of Oxford)

Dr Dominic Wilkinson (Neonatal Medicine and Bioethics, University of Adelaide)

Dr Dimitrina Spencer (Department of Education, University of Oxford)

Dr Shlomit Harrosh (Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford)

Paul Troop (Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and Faculty of Law, University of Oxford)