I am an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University (ANU). I work on issues in philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and ethics in both mainstream and Indian Buddhist philosophical traditions, and have published widely in all these areas. I also have research interests in epistemology, philosophy of action and ancient Greek philosophy.

Funded by an Australian Research Council Early Career Discovery Award (DECRA), I am currently writing an interdisciplinary book aimed at creating dialogue between Indian Buddhist philosophy and emotion research about the nature of fear, anxiety, and their cognitive and social regulation. For details of this and my other research projects, please see below and my research page.

Buddhist Ethics
and Moral Epistemology

I have research interests in Buddhist ethics, meta-ethics, and moral epistemology. Recent work explores the implications for moral responsibility of the Buddhist view that there is no self  (2022); I have published on Buddhism and Animals Ethics (2017), and am currently co-editing a book with Geoffrey Barstow on the topic, with my chapter comparatively exploring Kantian and Buddhist approaches to animals. Some of my earlier work critically explores the meta-ethical possibilities and limitations of Madhyamaka Buddhism (2011, 2015, 2018). I also explore issues about ethical agency when contextualised in Pramāṇavāda Buddhist epistemology (2010) and in dialogue with classical Chinese Confucianism and Daoism (2011a, 2011b)

Fear and its regulation:
An interdisciplinary study

I am writing an interdisciplinary book aimed at creating dialogue between Indian Buddhist philosophy and emotion research about the nature of fear, anxiety, and their cognitive and social regulation. I have so far published three articles from this project: Fear is Anticipatory: a Buddhist Analysis (2023), The Paradox of Fear in Classical Indian Buddhism (2021), Śāntideva and the moral psychology of fear (2019) as well as a popular media article, Can we Reinvent Ourselves? A Buddhist View  (2018). I also discuss some of my current thinking about fear in the context of my overall body of work in an interview published as Taking Refuge: Buddhist Perspectives on Fear (2023)

Buddhist Philosophy of Mind
in Dialogue with Science

My research increasingly focuses on Buddhist philosophy of mind in dialogue with science. Some recent work explores Buddhist arguments for idealism (2018) and for the reflexive self-awareness of consciousness (2018). I critically discuss the limits and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement between Buddhism and science (2020), and explore the potential of treating the Buddhist commitment to karma and rebirth as a pragmatically "useful fiction" (forthcoming). I also have a forthcoming piece showing that the Buddha anticipates Pascal's Wager in several important respects and provides the earliest textual evidence of dominance reasoning.