Elizabeth Finneron-Burns

Assistant Professor

DPhil (Oxford), MSc (LSE), BA Hons (Queen's)
Telephone: 519.661.2111 ext. 82236
E-mail: efinnero@uwo.ca
Office: Social Science Centre 7211

Research Interests

I am interested in our obligations to future generations, including who and how many people we create, and what kind of lives we leave them.

Current Research Projects

I am currently working on two main themes:

1) How to balance the needs and interests of future generations (many of whom will be better off than we are) with the needs of current people, particularly the global poor;

2) How we ought to think about the ethics of human extinction. Would there be anything bad or wrong about causing or allowing humans to become extinct?

Selected Publications

Scholarly Books (Authored & Co-Authored)

Forthcoming: Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, Tim Campbell and Elizabeth Finneron-Burns, eds. Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, Oxford University Press.

Refereed Journal Articles

2019: Review of Diana Coole’s Should We Control World Population? in Ethics & International Affairs, 33(1): 2019.
2018: ‘The Intergenerational Original Position.’ Social Theory & Practice, 43(4).
2017: ‘What’s Wrong with Human Extinction?’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47(2).
2016: ‘Contractualism and the Non-Identity Problem’. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19 (5).

Book Chapters

Forthcoming: 'State Pension Schemes and the Duties of Retirees' (forthcoming) in Stephen Gardiner (Ed.) Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Justice, Oxford University Press.

People