THINKING

A developing philosophical trajectory.

My current questions grow from earlier work in environmental philosophy and from the places in which those ideas were later tested: university classrooms, remote youth practice, international teaching and private tutoring.

01 · WHERE I BEGAN

Environmental philosophy and relational ontology

My Master of Philosophy examined Val Plumwood’s environmental philosophy, relational ontology and the ways metaphysical assumptions shape ethical relationships with the more-than-human world.

That work remains the foundation of how I approach philosophical problems: by asking what a conceptual framework permits us to notice, exclude or take for granted.

How do our metaphysical descriptions of the world shape the ethical relations we are able to recognise?

02 · WHERE IT WAS TESTED

Philosophy in teaching and practice

Teaching undergraduate philosophy, ethics and Responsible Data Science required me to make abstract ideas accessible without flattening their difficulty.

Youth work in Cooktown and teaching in Chiang Mai then tested those ideas outside the university. They made questions of communication, context, judgement and institutional practice immediate rather than merely theoretical.

What survives when philosophy leaves the seminar room and meets classrooms, communities and institutions?

03 · WHERE IT IS GOING

Questions about philosophy itself

I am now beginning to explore metaphilosophical questions about how philosophy understands its own methods, boundaries and authority.

I do not present this as an established specialisation. It is a developing direction that grows from my earlier research and from years spent teaching philosophical material across disciplinary and cultural settings.

What is philosophy doing when it examines the assumptions of other disciplines, and can it avoid abstracting from its own practice?

04 · AI IN THE CLASSROOM

Understanding, authorship and judgement

My interest in artificial intelligence is grounded in education rather than technical expertise. It connects my experience teaching Responsible Data Science and ethics with my current work as a secondary educator and private tutor.

Generative AI raises familiar philosophical questions in a new setting: what counts as understanding, when assistance becomes substitution, how authorship should be understood, and what educators should assess when fluent language can be produced instantly.

How should education change when producing an answer is no longer evidence that a student understands it?