Photo by Callan Fritsch

Research

I have a diverse research background in cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and philosophy of mind.

My experience includes involvement with Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as extensive work with personal identity literature. I work primarily on philosophy and phenomenology of sport, though also more broadly in normative ethics and behavioural psychology.

Presently, I am exploring how the influence of developing mental skills—specifically resilience, goal setting, visualisation and self-regulation—alongside the development of personal and athletic identity can measurably improve athletic competition performance, coping skills and psychological resilience. This project frames athletic performance as a holistic endeavour by combining psychological theories of resilience, mindfulness and identity development with normative accounts from the philosophy of sport. This perspective supports the design of interventions that engage the whole person—not just the competitor—leading to more sustainable, ethical and human-centred approaches to athletic performance.

You can find my CV here.

A paper on the nature of sport: A Value-Neutral Definition

  • Abstract: This paper explores the foundational definitions of sport and proposes why a value-neutral definition of sport offers the most defensible approach. My definition refrains from attributing moral or cultural worth to the activity and recognises that such worth, when present, is contingent rather than essential. Sport can be a site for excellence, but it can also be a site for exploitation. The point remains that it is a sport regardless.

    My approach aims to disentangle the descriptive core of sport from its evaluative framework, offering a cleaner and arguably more defensible account of what sport is, independent of any judgment about what it should be.

A paper on the utility of shame

  • Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between a self-regarding emotion, namely moral shame, and the self. This investigation requires that we carefully parse through existing accounts of the self and of shame to understand what utility comes with shame. What does it mean for us when we experience shame? And what does it mean for others when we ask them to feel shame? These questions are at the center of this paper. I argue that there ought not to be morally justifiable utility to shame because it is harmful to the self. This paper has salient practical implications for today’s society; especially when we consider the use of online shaming and the shaping of personal identity on the internet, considering the interactions between moral shame and the self is of particular importance.