School of Social and Political Science

Joseph Conrad

Job Title

PhD title: Climate Justice and the Corporation as a Moral Agent

Photo
Joseph Conrad

City (Address)

Edinburgh

Country (Address)

UK

Research interests

Research interests

climate justice, corporate ethics, collective agency & responsibility, justice & structural injustice, social ontology, political theory, moral philosophy, environmental ethics, sustainability

Background

My PhD research investigates corporate responsibilities for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Specifically, I examine business corporations’ role as collective moral agents and political actors in the context of the climate crisis. In doing so, I aim to further develop the climate change ethics as well as climate justice debate.

Alongside my studies, I work as a research assistant in the UKRI-funded climate finance project Financially re-designing the Anthropocene: Investigating tools, data, and practices for climate risks and targets at Warwick Business School (WBS).

Supervisors

Dr Elizabeth Cripps & Dr Philip Cook

Memberships

Edinburgh Political Theory Research Group

Graduate fellow of CRITIQUE (Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought)

Cofounder of CRITIQUE's Environmental Working Group

Education

PhD Political Theory (PIR), University of Edinburgh (2019-)

Visiting PhD researcher at ERC research project "The Business Corporations as a Political Actor" led by Prof Rutger Claassen, Ethics Institute Utrecht University (2023)

M.A. Environment and Natural Resources, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Iceland, Reykjavík (2018)

Visiting Graduate Student, Environmental Studies & Philosophy, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver (2017)

Diplom (M.Sc. equivalent) Mathematics, minor in Philosophy, Humboldt University of Berlin (2015)

Visiting Graduate Student, Mathematics & Philosophy, Complutense University of Madrid (2012)

Conference papers and presentations

2023 Responsibility for Justice, not Governance: A Youngian Approach to Corporate Political Responsibility, presentation to 3rd Wittenberg Business Ethics Conference, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

2023 The Corporation and the Climate: Ontology, Agency, Responsibility, and Justice, invited talk at IKON seminar, Warwick Business School (WBS)

2023 What Responsibility? Whose Power? Net-Zero Alliances in Climate Finance, paper presented at MANCEPT workshop "Business Corporations, Non-ideal Theory and Social Change", University of Manchester

2023 Climate Change as a Structural Injustice and Corporate Political Responsibility in Climate Change, invited talk at the workshop Climate Change and Group Agency, ETH Zürich

2023 Climate Change as a Structural Injustice and Corporate Political Responsibility in Climate Change, invited talk at the workshop The Business Corporation: Between Nature and Value, Utrecht University

2023 Corporate Political Responsibility: Justice, Social Structure, and Corporate Power, paper presented to the Society for Business Ethics, APA Pacific Meeting, San Francisco

2022 'Environmentalizing' Learning & Teaching: An Exploratory Journey into Pedagogy on a Collapsing Planet (with Grace Garland & Talia Shoval), Edinburgh Learning & Teaching Conference, University of Edinburgh

2022 The Emotions-Responsive Corporation: Why Corporations are Appropriate Targets of Moral Blame, presentation to Utrecht Philosophy Graduate Conference, Utrecht University

2022 The Emotions-Responsive Corporation: Why Corporations are Appropriate Targets of Moral Blame, presentation to NUI Galway International Graduate Philosophy Conference, National University of Ireland, Galway

2021 The Corporation as a Social Fact and as a Social Group, paper presented at MANCEPT workshop "Political Theory of the Business Corporation", University of Manchester

2021 The Corporation as a Social Fact and as a Social Group (video), presentation to Social Ontology 2021, UC San Diego

2021 Climate Justice and the Corporation as a Moral Agent, paper presented at Munich Graduate Conference in Ethics (MGCE), LMU München

2021 Corporate Responsibility Beyond Collective Moral Responsibility and Individual Role Responsibility, presentation to CRE's 3rd annual student conference, Center for Research on Ethics (CRE), Montreal

2021 Climate Justice and the Corporation as a Moral Agent, presentation to HKU Legal and Political Theory Postgraduate Conference, The University of Hong Kong

2021 Ontological Conceptions of Corporations, Corporate Moral Agency, and Responsibility, paper presented at Political Theory Research Group, University of Edinburgh

Awards

Award for the diffusion of research in ethics (2021), Center for Research on Ethics (CRE), Montreal

Adam Smith Research Essay Prize (2017), University of British Columbia (UBC)

Teaching

2022 Greats: From Plato to the Enlightenment, Tutor

2021, 2020 Morality and Value, Tutor

2021 Political Thinkers, Tutor

2020 Politics and Theories of International Development (online distance learning), Tutor

I am an Associate Fellow of AdvanceHE (formely HEA)

I was nominated for the 2021 EUSA Teaching Awards in the category "Teacher of the Year"

Other Outputs

Blog post Why We Should 'Environmentalise' the Curriculum

Blog post The Net-Zero Alliances: Insights from a Political Theory Perspective

Blog post Net Zero Target Setting for Financial Institutions: Academic Insights on “Standards Markets”

Interview with Prof Stephen M Gardiner on Climate Change and Philosophy

Virtual roundtable 'Environmentalising' Pedagogy

Virtual roundtable Training Environmentally Responsible Students