Current projects
EPIC (Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare)
We have been awarded funding by the Wellcome Trust to explore the notion of epistemic injustice and its applications in healthcare. The project, funded by a 6-year Discovery Award, is led by Havi Carel at Bristol University and is called EPIC. Also features Ian Kidd, Matthew Broome, and Sheelagh McGuinness. We have a blog here.
Agency in Practice
We have been awarded by UKRI funding to develop a new methodology linking interactional and experiential approaches, and involving young people as co-analysts of mental health encounters (from November 2022 to October 2024). It is led by Michael Larkin at Aston University and features Matthew Broome, Rose McCabe, Rachel Temple and Clara Bergen. Our website is here.
Previous projects
Agency, Justice and Social Identity in Youth Mental Health (UKRI 2020-2022)
This was a collaborative Research Project led by Rose McCabe at City University, involving young people and academics working in Philosophy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Ethics and Neuroscience. We posit that agency is a vital component of adolescent mental health, and are seeking to explore how it can be fostered in social interactions in youth mental health care.
The study was awarded a £100k MRC/AHRC/ESRC Engagement Award. These Engagement Awards are for up to 12 months aimed at building and strengthening a cross-disciplinary community in the research area of Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind.
Co-applicants include Matthew Broome (Birmingham), Michael Larkin (Aston), Rachel Temple (McPin's Young People's Network). See this series of blog posts on Imperfect Cognitions, discussing the motivation behind the project.
Costs and Benefits of Optimism (Templeton Foundation 2015-2016)
I was awarded a 12-month non-residential fellowship (worth $76,299) as part of the Hope and Optimism funding initiative supported by the John Templeton Foundation and managed by the universities of Cornell and Notre Dame in the United States.
The project aimed to: (1) clarify what the optimism bias is and how it works; (2) investigate its effects on rationality, the acquisition of knowledge, and moral behaviour.
The research fellow on the project was Anneli Jefferson. Outputs included a conference on the optimism bias, and four original papers, authored by Anneli and myself. We also guest-edited a special issue of Consciousness and Cognition on the themes of the fellowship.
PERFECT Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (European Research Council Consolidator Grant 2014-2019)
I was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (€ 1,900,075) to study the pragmatic and epistemic features of pathological and non-pathological cognitions. The five-year project, PERFECT, started in October 2014 and ended in September 2019. The research team included post-doctoral researchers and PhD students.
Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Kathy Puddifoot, Andrea Polonioli and Sophie Stammers all contributed to PERFECT as post-doctoral research fellows. Magdalena Antrobus got her PhD in November 2017, and Valeria Motta in December 2020. Doctoral students Alex Miller Tate, Matilde Aliffi, and Eugenia Lancellotta acted as research assistants in the last year of the project and have now all successfully completed their PhDs. PERFECT also benefited throughout from the active participation of clinical psychologist Michael Larkin (Aston University).
PERFECT aimed to establish whether cognitions that are inaccurate in some important respect can be good for us from a pragmatic or epistemic point of view.
Main case studies included delusional beliefs, distorted memories, and confabulatory explanations, which are frequent in the non-clinical population and also listed as symptoms of psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and dementia. We asked whether they can be adaptive, psychologically beneficial, and even epistemically advantageous. The project also examined optimistic beliefs and predictions, implicit biases, and complex emotions such as loneliness and boredom.
One of the main aims of PERFECT was to undermine the theoretical foundations of mental health stigma and we worked together with Mind in Camden, the Mental Health Foundation, and Inside Out Australia to bring our research to mental health activists and people with experience of distress.
So far, we produced 3 books, 2 special issues, 46 journal articles, 10 book chapters, 1 policy brief, and 2 PhD thesis, as well as a number of open access resources including blog posts, podcasts, videos, and a training package in philosophy and mental health.
PERFECT was featured in the University of Birmingham Heroes campaign in November 2015 and November 2017.
Fellowship on the Epistemic Innocence of Imperfect Cognitions (AHRC 2013-2014)
From September 2013 for 12 months I was funded by an AHRC Fellowship (Science in Culture theme) to pursue an investigation of the potential epistemic benefits of delusional beliefs, distorted memories, and confabulatory explanations. Ema Sullivan-Bissett worked with me on the project as a part-time research fellow.
The project outputs include a monograph published in 2020 (The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs, OUP) several research papers, and a special issue of Consciousness and Cognition on Costs and Benefits of Imperfect Cognitions. The project workshop was held in May 2014 at the University of Birmingham. As part of the project, we also created an international network of researchers, the Imperfect Cognitions research network, featuring scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and at different stages of their career.
Small Grant (Ethics and Society) on Moral Responsibility and Psychopathology (Wellcome Trust 2013)
I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Small Grant in the Ethics & Society stream to organise an interdisciplinary one-day workshop on moral responsibility and psychopathology.
With the grant co-applicants, Matthew Broome and Matteo Mameli, I ask what the relationship should be between an agent's diagnosis of mental illness and an attribution of less than full moral responsibility to that agent.
Research Expenses Grant on Rationality and Sanity (Wellcome Trust 2011)
A project entitled "Rationality and Sanity: Implications of a Diagnosis of Mental Illness for Autonomy as Self Governance" was funded by the Wellcome Trust with a Research Expenses Grant (January-June 2011). I looked at the relationship between rationality and sanity and its consequences for diagnosis in psychiatry.
This was the starting point in order to then explore the notion of autonomy as self-governance and distinguish between two questions: (a) whether one has the capacity to govern oneself; and (b) whether one is successful at governing oneself. In this context, I explored the philosophical literature on the right not to know, especially when the object of knowledge is information about oneself obtained via genetic testing. I also wrote a guest post for the Wellcome Trust blog on the right not to know in the context of psychiatric disorders.
Research leave to investigate authorship and ownership of thoughts (AHRC 2009)
From January to end of April 2009 I was on AHRC-funded leave to complete a number of articles on delusions and a monograph for Oxford University Press in the International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry Series. My research question was: Are ownership and authorship of thoughts necessary for intentionality and rationality?
The monograph, entitled Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs, was published in November 2009 and contributes both to the debate on the doxastic conception of delusions and to the literature on belief ascription. I was awarded the American Philosophical Association book prize for the monograph in December 2011. A book I co-edited with Matthew Broome, entitled Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives, was listed among the Guardian Books of the Year in 2009.
Endeavour Research Fellowship to investigate delusions (2009)
From July to December 2008 I was Endeavour Research Fellow at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (now ARC Centre of Excellence of Cognition and its Disorder) at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, working on a project on rationality and self-knowledge in delusions.
The Fellowship was funded by the Department of Science, Education and Training of the Australian Government. In my time at Macquarie I participated in the Delusions and Hypnosis reading group together with Max Coltheart, Robyn Langdon, Amanda Barnier, Rochelle Cox, and other philosophers and psychologists working on delusions.