Dr Annabelle Lever

Annabelle received her doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she specialised in political and social theory and in political economy. She taught political theory at the University of Rochester, and has held visiting positions at Harvard University and at MIT. More recently she has taught philosophy and public policy at the London School of Economics and at Sciences-Po, in Paris. Her work is mainly focused on problems of privacy, equality and democracy, but she is also interested in ethics and security, intellectual property, bioethics and public health. On Privacy will be published by Routledge and Contemporary Democratic Theory: A Critical Introduction will be published by Oxford University Press. Annabelle was a Senior Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1999-2000 and a Hoover Fellow in Economic and Social Ethics at Louvain-la-Neuve in Spring 2010.

Privacy, CCTV, abortion, reproductive rights, rights to marry, justice, rights, sexual equality, racial equality, racial profiling, ethics and counter-terrorism, intellectual property, human gene patents, democracy, judicial review, representation, compulsory voting, the secret ballot, public service reform, rationing in healthcare.

I am currently completing books on privacy and on democratic theory; and am writing a chapter on democratic theory and public service reform for Citizen, State and Civil Society, sponsored by the 2020 Public Services Commission and published by the ESRC. I then hope to combine philosophical and empirical research in a project called ‘The Value of Time’, which seeks to understand why some people wish to extend their lives in circumstances where others are desperate to die. I am also revising for publication a talk on ‘Democracy and Terrorism’ which I presented to the Afternoon Discussion on ‘Terrorism and the Rule of Law’, sponsored by Baroness Nicholson in the House of Lords, 8 July 2009 and, in an earlier form, as a Key Note Speaker for two workshops on ‘Ethics and Counter-Terrorism’ at the Home Office, in January 2009.

I am thoroughly enjoying a three year research fellowship, with no need to teach. However, I am happy to supervise theses for students interested in bioethics, medical ethics or jurisprudence. In the past, I have taught contemporary political philosophy, philosophy and public policy, social theory, feminist theory, philosophy of law.

‘Democracy and Judicial Review: Are They Really Incompatible?’ Perspectives on Politics 7 (4) Dec. 2009

‘Liberalism, Democracy and the Ethics of Voting’, Politics 29 (3) Oct. 2009, 223 - 227

‘Racial Profiling and Jury Trials’ in ‘Debate: Ethical Issues in Racial Profiling’, The Jury Expert (Vol. 21, 1. Jan. 2009), 20-35

‘Is it Ethical to Patent Human Genes?’ in Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice, eds. A. Gosseries, A. Marciano and A. Strowel, (Palgrave, October, 2008), 246-264

‘Mrs. Aremac and the Camera: A Response to Ryberg’ Res Publica: A Journal of Legal and Social Philosophy, (Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2008) 35-42

‘What’s Wrong with Racial Profiling? Another Look at the Problem’, Criminal Justice Ethics (Vol. 26, No. 1, Spring, 2007) 20-28

‘Mill and the Secret Ballot: Beyond Coercion and Corruption’, Utilitas, (Vol. 19, Issue 03, 2007) 354-378

‘Is Judicial Review Undemocratic?’ Public Law, (Summer, 2007) 280-298

‘Privacy Rights and Democracy: A Contradiction in Terms?’ Contemporary Political Theory, (Vol. 5, No. 2, May 2006) 142-162

‘Why Racial Profiling is Hard to Justify: A Response to Risse and Zeckhauser’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, (Vol. 33, No. 1, January 2005) 94-11

‘Ethics and the Patenting of Human Genes’, Journal of Philosophy, Science and Law, (Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 2001)

‘Must Privacy and Equality Conflict? A Philosophical Examination of Some Legal Evidence’ Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences, (Vol. 67, No. 4, Winter 2000) 1137-1171

‘The Politics of Paradox: A Response to Wendy Brown’, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, (Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2000) 242 – 254.

‘Compulsory Voting: A Critical Perspective’, forthcoming the British Journal of Political Science 40 (1) Jan. 2010

I am available to speak to the media about privacy, sexual and racial equality, democracy and bioethics.