I am an Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Bioethics at the University of Copenhagen.
Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher in bioethics at the University of Copenhagen, and before that I held a teaching associate position at the University of Bristol, where I also obtained my PhD in Philosophy in 2019.
My primary philosophical interests fall broadly under value theory. I currently work on topics related to reproductive ethics, autonomy, and epistemic injustice.
Research areas
Moral Philosophy
Bioethics
Social Epistemology
Applied Ethics
Articles
Peer-reviewed journal articles
◦ Unfreedom or Mere Inability? The Case of Biomedical Enhancement, The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy (forthcoming)
Mere inability, which refers to what persons are naturally unable to do, is traditionally thought to be distinct from unfreedom, which is a social type of constraint. The advent of biomedical enhancement, however, makes it possible for some people’s mere inabilities to become matters of unfreedom. In this paper I discuss several ways that this might occur: firstly, bioenhancement can exacerbate social pressures to enhance one’s abilities; secondly, people may face discrimination for not enhancing; thirdly, the new abilities made possible due to bioenhancement may be accompanied by new inabilities for the enhanced and unenhanced; finally, shifting values around abilities and inabilities due to bioenhancement may reinforce a pre-existing ableism about human abilities.
In this paper, I claim that live uterus donors ought to be considered for the possibility of compensation. I support my claim on the basis of comparable arguments which have already been applied to gamete donation, surrogacy, and other kinds of organ donation. However, I acknowledge that there are specificities associated with uterus donation, which make the issue of incentive and reward a harder ethical case relative to gamete donation, surrogacy, and other kinds of organ donation. Ultimately, I contend that while reimbursement for the costs incurred by live uterus donors should be treated as a necessary ethical minimum, how much further we ought to remunerate uterus donations remains an open question.
Individualistic traditions of autonomy have long been critiqued by feminists for their atomistic and asocial presentation of human agents. Relational approaches to autonomy were developed as an alternative to these views. Relational accounts generally capture a more socially informed picture of human agents, and aim to differentiate between social phenomena that are conducive to our agency versus those that pose a hindrance to our agency. In this article, I explore the various relational conceptualizations of autonomy profferred to date. I critically review some of the ongoing internal disputes within the relational autonomy literature, and conclude the article by taking stock of the value of relational autonomy despite these unresolved debates.
Because many involuntarily childless people have equal interests in benefitting from assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization as a mode of treatment, we have normative reasons to ensure inclusive access to such interventions for as many of these people as is reasonable and possible. However, the prevailing eligibility criterion for access to assisted reproductive technologies – infertility – is inadequate to serve the goal of inclusive access. This is because the prevailing frameworks of infertility – medical and social infertility – fail to precisely capture and unify the relevance of certain involuntarily childless experiences as warranting ART treatment. I argue that the least we can do for those who may have an interest in accessing ARTs is to conceptualize involuntarily childless experiences in dialogue with interactionist and ecological models of disability, to outline a unified and more inclusive eligibility criterion.
In the future, full ectogestation – in which artificial placenta technology would be used to carry out the entirety of gestation – could be an alternative to human pregnancy. This article analyzes some underexplored objections to ectogestation which relate to the possibility for new and continuing forms of social oppression. In particular, we examine whether ectogestation could be linked to an unwarranted de-valuing of certain aspects of female reproductive embodiment, or exacerbate objectionable kinds of scrutiny over the reproductive choices of gestating persons. Without discounting the potential benefits of full ectogestation, we conclude that the socially oppressive potential of ectogestation, on top of other concerns, warrants further critical ethical reflection.
The liberal understanding of reproductive autonomy as free choice and non-interference in reproduction is a common one. However, this liberal reading of reproductive autonomy only offers us a limited ethical understanding of what is at stake in many kinds of reproductive choices. This is because it does not fully capture normative nuances such as who benefits from which reproductive options, the extent of the benefits and harms involved in various reproductive interventions, and the reasons for why people are driven to make certain reproductive choices.
In this paper, I critique the commonly accepted dichotomy between commercial versus altruistic surrogacy arrangements. Whether a surrogacy is morally permissible or not, I claim, does not hinge on whether it is paid (‘commercial’) or unpaid (‘altruistic’). The moral legitimacy of surrogacy, I argue, is best determined by appraisal of virtue-abiding conditions constitutive of the surrogacy arrangement.
Natalie Stoljar posits that purely procedural theories of autonomy are unable to explain the ‘feminist intuition’, which is the idea that the internalization of false and oppressive norms are incompatible with autonomy. She claims instead that an account based on ‘normative competence’ – which requires true beliefs and critical reflection – can explain why oppressive norms should be excluded as legitimate decision-making inputs. On my view, however, the normative competence approach is subject to a worrying problem. While Stoljar’s view successfully problematizes the internalization of oppression, her view misattributes non-autonomy also to those who perpetrate the oppression. I suggest that this is implausible, arguing instead that we can establish an asymmetry of autonomy between those who oppress others and those who are made target of oppression.
Disagreement between first-personal experiences of an agent’s autonomy and third-personal determinations of their autonomy present various challenges for the ascription of autonomy. My view is that insights from a dialogical rather than non-dialogical account of autonomy gives us the resources to combat the challenges associated with autonomy ascription.
In moral and political philosophy, topics like the distributive inequities conferred via special partial relationships – family relationships, for example – have been frequently debated. However, the epistemic dimensions of such partiality are seldom discussed in the ethical context, and the topic of partial relationships rarely feature in the realm of social epistemology. My view is that the role of partial relationships is worth exploring to enrich our understanding of epistemic injustice and its transmission. I claim that epistemic features typical of partial relationships make phenomena like epistemic injustice easier to mask, more difficult to identify, and harder to correct.
Literature on testimonial injustice and ways we might respond to it have flourished since Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice. Little attention is given, however, to the question of whether bystanders other than the direct perpetrators of testimonial injustice are accountable for testimonial injustice. Drawing from philosophical literature on omissions and moral responsibility, I argue herein that agents other than the direct perpetrators of testimonial injustice may indeed be accountable for failures to try and redress testimonial injustice.
Some have claimed that moral bioenhancement undermines freedom and authenticity, thereby making moral bioenhancement morally impermissible. In my view, emphasizing these individualistic conceptions of autonomy do not provide particularly strong foundations on which to premise the permissibility of moral bioenhancement. Instead, I propose that we investigate the relationship between moral bioenhancement and a more relational kind of autonomy.
In this article, I offer a conceptualisation of a phenomenon I call anticipatory epistemic injustice. My view is that anticipatory epistemic injustice consists of the wrongs that agents can suffer as a result of anticipated challenges in their process of taking up testimony-sharing opportunities.
In this review essay, I critically evaluate the concept of autonomy and the role that it plays in the philosophy of sex and love in Patricia Marino’s book, Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Opinionated Introduction.
◦ Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare, The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Bioethics
Are there particular epistemic difficulties that some groups of patients suffer compared with others, with regards to articulacy and expression of their health experiences? This book chapter will explore this issue using the philosophical framework of ‘epistemic injustice’.
The Affects of Epistemic Injustice, Uehiro-CEPDISC workshop on discrimination and applied ethics November 2021
(De)Pathologizing Infertility, Changing Values, Changing Technologies Conference, TU Delft October 2021
Assisted Reproduction as a Case of Social Enhancement, CAPPE Conference on The Politics of Reproduction, University of Brighton September 2021
Social Discrimination and Epistemic Vice, Conference on Discrimination, Aarhus University August 2021
Accountability for Testimonial Injustice, Themes from Testimonial Injustice and Trust: An online workshop, University College Dublin June 2021
Beyond the Commercial/Altruistic Distinction in Surrogacy Arrangements, Ethics in a Global Environment, University of Birmingham May 2021
Ectogenesis: A Tool for Liberation or Oppression? [with Andrea Bidoli], University of Bristol May 2021
Challenging Bionormativity and Heteronormativity in Conceptions of Family, BPPA Annual Conference: Radical Philosophy, University of Manchester November 2020
What Friends Are For, The Normativity and Epistemology of Friendship Conference, Trinity College Dublin September 2020
Autonomy and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, The Ends of Autonomy Colloquium, University of Warwick July 2020
Is Moral Bioenhancement Morally Permissible? Women in Philosophy Conference, University of Bristol March 2019
Feminist Commitments for a Contemporary Autonomy Theory, Individuals and Collectivities: SIFA Mid-Term Conference, University of Genova (winner of the SIFA Young Scholar Prize) December 2017
Mental Illness, Treatment Competence, and Patient Autonomy, PG Conference on Medical Humanities, University of Exeter June 2017
Confucianism, Feminism, and Autonomy, Autonomy and Gender Conference, University of Bristol June 2017
A Millian Perspective on Paternalism, Topics in Global Justice: Agency, Power, and Policy, University of Birmingham May 2016
The Problem of Oppression for Procedural Accounts of Autonomy, LSE Political Theory Graduate Conference, London School of Economics March 2016
Teaching
I have taught on a wide range of philosophical and interdisciplinary modules at the university level. Furthermore, I am a Higher Education Academy Associate Fellow, and I have also completed Level 1 of the SAPERE accredited P4C (Philosophy for Children) course.
My current teaching duties are:
◦ Medical Ethics, UG
◦ AI Ethics, UG
◦ Reproductive Technologies and Family Ties, PG
I have previously taught on the following undergraduate and postgraduate courses:
◦ City Futures: Migration, Citizenship, and Planetary Change, UG
◦ Epistemology and Metaphysics, PG
◦ Ethics, UG
◦ Introduction to Philosophy, UG
◦ Knowledge and Reality, UG
◦ Philosophy and the Environment, UG
◦ Philosophy of Science, UG and PG
◦ Political Philosophy, UG
◦ Readings in Value Theory (Plato and Aristotle), UG
J.Y. Lee 