Ben Davies

School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities

Lecturer in Political Philosophy

PGR Seminar Lead

ben.davies@sheffield.ac.uk

9 Mappin Street

Full contact details

Ben Davies
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT

Profile: Ben joined the Department of Philosophy in September 2023 as Lecturer in Political Philosophy. Before that, he was a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, as well as teaching in Leeds and the US. He studied at King’s College London and the University of Edinburgh.

Research interests

Ben is primarily interested in the ethics and politics of health care. In the past, this has included topics such as intergenerational justice; patient and practitioner responsibility; and the idea of ‘sufficiency’ in health provision. He is now developing work on how democratic health priority-making decisions should be, and what this would look like in practice. He is interested in working with people who work in healthcare priority-setting at any level.

As well as this central focus, Ben has research interests in:

Ageing
Animal ethics
Autonomy
Disability, especially its challenge to mainstream ethics and political theory
Discrimination
Professional ethics
Satisficing
Well-being and prudence

He is happy to hear from MA and PhD students interested in these topics, or other topics in bioethics broadly construed.

Publications

Edited books

Davies B, Levy N, De Marco G & Savulescu J (Eds.) (2024) Responsibility and Healthcare. Oxford University PressOxford.

Journal articles

Davies B (2025) Mapping, moralizing, and more: response to commentaries. American Journal of Bioethics, 25(4), W3-W7. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Schramme T (2025) Health capital and its significance for health justice. Public Health Ethics, 18(1). View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2024) War on all fronts: a theory of health security justice by Nicholas G. Evans, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2023. pp. 258. $45.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780262545433. Bioethics, 38(9), 823-824. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2024) Disability discrimination in emergencies: the return of Taurek?. Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy, 22(3), 1048-1062. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Parker J (2024) Deference or critical engagement: how should healthcare practitioners use Clinical Ethics Guidance?. Monash Bioethics Review, 42(1), 1-15. View this article in WRRO
Moriarty CM & Davies B (2024) Feeding infants: choice-specific considerations, parental obligation, and pragmatic satisficing. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 27(2), 167-183. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Savulescu J (2024) Institutional responsibility is prior to personal responsibility in a pandemic. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 58, 215-234. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2023) What do ‘humans’ need? Sufficiency and pluralism. Ethics, Policy & Environment. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2023) A new paradox for well-being subjectivism. Analysis, 83(4), 673-682. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2023) Medical need and health need. Clinical Ethics, 18(3), 287-291. View this article in WRRO
Park JK & Davies B (2023) Rationing, responsibility, and vaccination during COVID-19: a conceptual map. The American Journal of Bioethics, 24(7), 66-79. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2023) Healthcare priorities: the “young” and the “old”. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 32(2), 174-185. View this article in WRRO
Zohny H, Davies B & Wilkinson D (2022) Affirmative action in healthcare resource allocation: vaccines, ventilators and race. Bioethics, 36(9), 970-977. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2022) The prospects for ‘prospect utilitarianism’. Utilitas, 34(3), 335-343. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Parker J (2022) Doctors as appointed fiduciaries: a supplemental model for medical decision-making. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 31(1), 23-33. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2022) Responsibility and the recursion problem. Ratio, 35(2), 112-122. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2021) ‘Personal health surveillance’: the use of mHealth in healthcare responsibilisation. Public Health Ethics, 14(3), 268-280. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2021) Grow the pie, or the resource shuffle? Commentary on Munthe, Fumagalli and Malmqvist. Journal of Medical Ethics, 47(2), 98-99. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Savulescu J (2021) The right not to know: some steps towards a compromise. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 24(1), 137-150. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Savulescu J (2020) From sufficient health to sufficient responsibility. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 17(3), 423-433. View this article in WRRO
Parker J & Davies B (2020) No blame no gain? From a no blame culture to a responsibility culture in medicine. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 37(4), 646-660. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2020) ‘The right not to know and the obligation to know’, response to commentaries. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(5), 309-310. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2020) The right not to know and the obligation to know. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(5), 300-303. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2020) Responsibility and the limits of patient choice. Bioethics, 34(5), 459-466. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Savulescu J (2019) Solidarity and responsibility in health care. Public Health Ethics, 12(2), 133-144. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2019) Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination. Utilitas, 31(2), 191-202. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2018) Ageing and terminal illness: Problems for Rawlsian justice. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35(4), 775-789. View this article in WRRO
Davies B & Felappi G (2017) Publish or perish. Metaphilosophy, 48(5), 745-761. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2017) Utilitarianism and animal cruelty: further doubts. De Ethica, 3(3), 5-19. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2017) Paternalism and evaluative shift. Moral Philosophy and Politics, 4(2), 325-346. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2017) Enhancement and the conservative bias. Philosophy & Technology, 30(3), 339-356. View this article in WRRO
Davies B (2016) Fair Innings and Time‐Relative Claims. Bioethics, 30(6), 462-468.
Davies B (2015) Justice Between the Young and the Old. SOCIOLOGICKY CASOPIS-CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 51(3), 562-566.

Book chapters

Parker J & Davies B (2024) Physician, Heal Thyself, Responsibility and Healthcare (pp. 247-268). Oxford University PressOxford
Davies B, De Marco G, Levy N & Savulescu J (2024) Introduction: Responsibility and Health Care, Responsibility and Healthcare (pp. 1-32). Oxford University PressOxford
Davies B & Douglas T (2022) Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing In Ryberg J & Roberts JV (Ed.), Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence

Research group: Please get in touch if you are interested in being supervised in topics in political philosophy and applied ethics, especially related to health and health care, broadly construed.

Teaching activities

HPH357 Global Justice (Autumn)

HPH215 Bioethics (Spring)