Environmental Philosopher & Public Health Scientist

As our societies realize the necessity to reprioritize ecology and biology as master sciences in the great transition upon us, I see science, public health, and philosophy working synergistically, just as medicine now accepts a biopsychosocial model of health. Writ large, this looks like: (1) understanding how life and ecosystems flourish, in order to (2) allow us to figure out how to calibrate our values to meet those non-negotiable fundamentals, so that we can (3) design our societies to meet the needs of all, enabling greater ingenuity, innovation, and empowerment.

Each one of us contributes our own crucial piece of the puzzle in addressing our metacrisis, and I honor each sincere contribution. In my research and organizing efforts, I endeavor to prioritize those issues which have the most potential leverage to address major societal challenges. This can include gaining and providing deeper insight into hyped topics, encouraging high-level pivots to important paradigms in policy or business, or pushing back against misguided enthusiasm for solutions that are single metric, not effective, or will make things worse.

To accomplish these different modes of applied scholarship, I perform experiments, reflect on the history of culture and concepts, and piece together documentary evidence from the archives of the Anthropocene to inform and assess policy, applying systems thinking to bio-ethical cases. This engaged methodology maps multi-level patterns in the social and environmental determinants of health together with philosophical concerns about the utility of our utilities, aiming to provide direction for targeted interventions leveraging ethically- and science-based social and institutional harmonization.

And, I am lucky enough to have my work funded by multiple active grants, large and small, public and private (see Research), and have the honor to serve as the editor-in-chief of the journal Biosemiotics.