Professor Thomas Douglas

Tom Douglas is Professor of Applied Philosophy and Director of Research at the Oxford Uehiro Institute. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College and Principal Investigator on the project 'Protecting Minds: The Right to Mental Integrity and the Ethics of Arational Influence', funded by a Consolidator Award from the European Research Council. 

Tom initially qualified as a medical doctor at the University of Otago (New Zealand) before taking up a Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford, where he received his BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics in 2005, and his DPhil in Philosophy in 2010. From 2010-13 he held a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship in the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and a Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College; from 2013-19 he led the project 'Neurointerventions in Crime Prevention: An Ethical Analysis’, funded by an Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust; and from 2015-19 he was Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease. 

Tom’s research lies mainly in practical and normative ethics. His work currently focuses on the ethics of bodily, mental and behavioural influence/interference and the ethics of behavioural prediction. Previously, he has written on the the nature and moral status of moral improvement; tensions between special obligations and requirements of fairness; slippery slope arguments; reproductive ethics; and the dual-use dilemma, among other topics. More information is available on his personal website here and research programme website here.

Featured publications

Douglas T, 'What Does It Take to Trespass on a Person’s Body?' Forthcoming in Analysis.

Douglas T, 'An Intuitive, Abductive Argument for a Right Against Mental Interference’, Journal of Ethics 2024; 29: 133-155.

De Marco G*, Simons J*, Forsberg L, Douglas T, ‘What Makes a Medical Intervention Invasive?’, Journal of Medical Ethics 2024; 50: 226–233, (* joint first authors).

De Marco G, Douglas T, 'Nudge Transparency Is Not Required for Nudge Resistibility', Ergo, 2023; 10(5): doi:10.3998/ergo.4635.

Douglas T, ‘Is Moral Status Good for You?’, forthcoming in Clarke S, Zohny H, Savulescu J (eds), Rethinking Moral Status (Oxford University Press). 

Douglas T, Devolder K, 'Gene Editing, Identity and Benefit', Philosophical Quarterly 2022; 72(2): 305-325.

Douglas T, ‘Punishing Wrongs from the Distant Past’, Law and Philosophy 2019; 38(4): 335-358.

Douglas T, ‘Parental Partiality and Future Children’, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2019; 15(1): 1-18.

Birks D, Douglas T, Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018).