I'm an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam.

My training is in moral and political philosophy, where my primary research focuses on climate and environmental ethics.

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the High Meadows Environmental Institute and the University Center for Human Values, as part of the Climate Futures Initiative. Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, on the "Fair Limits" project.

I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from Georgetown University where I wrote a dissertation that defends an account of climate morality titled, “Global Climate Justice and Individual Duties.” 

As an interdisciplinary scholar, I work broadly on ethical issues regarding human-environmental interactions and within social-ecological system. I work at both the theoretical and practical level, across spatial and temporal scales to investigate questions about individual and collective responsibility, and how to develop justice-oriented policy measures and institutional design. In my work, I try to serve as a bridge-builder at the complex interface between science and values so that we can develop empirically informed and justice-oriented solutions to our most urgent environmental crises (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution).
I am currently working on a wide range of projects.
  • Justice and the Energy Transition: I work broadly on the energy transition, including theoretical work on principles for how to distribute scarce resources. As part of that work, I am currently collaborating with UvA researchers from FMG and SEVEN on conceptualizing sufficientarian and limitarian thresholds (having enough, having too much), impacts of threshold choices on Earth system boundaries, and possible implications for policy.
  • Ethics of Climate Activism: As part of my longstanding work linking individual and collective responsibility, I’m am trying to understand the moral contours of our possible permissions/obligations/prohibitions around engaging in various forms of climate activism, including lawbreaking.
  • Coastal Squeezing: Together with colleagues from IBED, we are trying to understand the drivers and impacts of coastal squeezing, as well as possible responses to squeezing and their social, political, and ethical tradeoffs.
  • Climate Mobility: In relation to my work on climate justice and coastal squeezing (e.g., managed retreat in coastal communities), I am also working with UvA colleagues from FGw, FMG, and FEB  on climate mobility justice in Europe in connection to local pressures from the green transition.
  • Rights of Nature: As part of a collaborative UvA project with researchers from law, humanities, and CEDLA, we are trying to understand different conceptualizations (and practical expressions) of rights of nature and compare strategies, obstacles, successes, and failures of various RoN initiatives.
  • Normative Methodology: I also work broadly on methodology for doing ethics in the real world that is both contextually specific, suitably ambitious, and robustly theoretically grounded.