· Climate Justice · African Philosophy · Philosophy of Slavery/Race
I am a PhD candidate (ABD) in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. My work sits at the intersection of political philosophy, environmental ethics, and African philosophy. My dissertation extends Rawls to address the moral challenges posed by climate change — arguing for a principled foundation for global climate action that is as grounded in justice as it is politically feasible.
Before Notre Dame, I earned a BA in Philosophy and Social Sciences from Spiritan University College, Ghana, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Sheffield. This educational journey across three continents shapes my conviction that philosophy must speak across cultural and geopolitical boundaries.
My scholarship is animated by a belief that rigorous philosophising must ultimately touch ground — inform policy debates on climate change, distributive justice, and human welfare, particularly for communities in the Global South who bear the sharpest edge of ecological crisis they did very little or nothing to bring about.
Beyond the academy, I have worked as a journalist, NGO advocate, newspaper and radio editor, and policy researcher — including with the International Food Policy Research Institute. I remain committed to mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds and to community engagement in environmental justice work.
Examining the moral dimensions of climate change, with attention to questions of collective action, collective historical responsibility, climate debt, and reparative justice. My work aims at bridging the gap between normative theory and policy.
Engaging Rawls's work — and its limits — in the face of global and intergenerational challenges it was not originally designed to address. I extend the veil of ignorance and the difference principle to account for climate victims across generations and national boundaries, drawing on recent global justice literature.
Bringing African philosophical traditions into dialogue with Western analytic philosophy on questions of justice, community, and personhood. My position is that these traditions offer indispensable resources for global ethics.
Investigating how early modern philosophers engaged — or failed to engage — with slavery and racial hierarchy, and the philosophical legacies of those failures. I also seek to understand the intersection of epistemology, moral philosophy, and the political economy of enslavement.
Exploring questions about the nature of social kinds, group agency, and collective responsibility — particularly as they bear on climate obligation and historical injustice. How do we attribute responsibility to nations, corporations, and generations as collective agents? What moral remainder remains?
Drawing on my background in journalism and policy research, I examine how philosophical theories and frameworks must be reconstructed to address the lived realities of communities fighting poverty, structural vulnerability, and ecological collapse simultaneously.
This dissertation argues that the moral claims of climate justice can be grounded in a principled extension of Rawls's theory of justice. I contend that the principles of justice Rawls develops for domestic societies, when properly extended, generate robust obligations on the part of high-emitting nations to remediate the harms they have disproportionately caused.
Argues that Singer's famous drowning-child argument can be reconstructed on Scanlonian contractualist grounds, avoiding the common objection that utilitarian beneficence is unreasonably demanding while preserving the moral urgency of the core intuition.
What does moral progress consist in? What is moral progress to a society, to the enslaver, to the enslaved? How do we measure moral progress, and who does the measuring? Aside from the claim that a world without slavery is better than one with it, what principled argument justifies the largely unexamined position that abolition is the quintessential example of moral progress? — an analysis of these and related questions.
A philosophical analysis of 'body-in-the-room' style minority representation, arguing for complete representation of minorities and what that should consist in. Engages questions from social epistemology and standpoint theory about why epistemic representation is more valuable, and why anything short of complete representation may be more harmful, epistemically speaking, than no representation at all.
MA Thesis, University of Sheffield. Supervised by Prof. Max K. Hayward. Examines the conditions under which moral character is developed and the implications for theories of moral responsibility, drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics and contemporary moral psychology.
Education
University of Notre Dame
Dissertation: Towards a Normative Foundation for Global Climate Action/Policy
Supervisor: Prof. James P. Sterba
University of Sheffield, UK
Thesis: Moral Development · Advisor: Prof. Max K. Hayward
Spiritan University College, Ghana
First Class Honours · Valedictorian, Class of 2013
Fellowships & Awards
Franco Family Dissertation Fellow
Kellogg Doctoral Affiliate
NEH Funded Participant
Distinguished Graduate Student Award
Teaching & Research Experience
Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
Ethics of Climate Change (undergraduate).
Courses designed: Slavery and Philosophy; African Political Philosophy.
Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
Philosophy of Law — Prof. Warfield; God and the Good Life — Prof. Paul Blaschko; Introduction to Philosophy — Prof. Jeff Speaks.
Spiritan University College, Ghana
Ethical Theories; Political Philosophy; Philosophical Methodology; Introduction to Ethics.
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Policy research on food security and agricultural development.
Pledge Ghana (NGO)
Professional Experience
University of Sheffield (Africa & Middle East)
The Goodshepherd Newspaper, Kumasi Archdiocese
Kapital Radio, Imperial Broadcasting Corporation — Kumasi
I approach teaching as a philosophical vocation — one that demands the same rigour, honesty, and care that I bring to research. My courses invite students to examine the ethical dimensions of issues they already inhabit: climate change, racial injustice, global inequality. I am particularly committed to fostering philosophical skills in students from under-represented communities.
At Notre Dame, I have taught and designed courses at both introductory and advanced undergraduate levels. I have developed syllabi for courses in Slavery and Philosophy (supported by the NEH Georgetown Workshop) and African Political Philosophy — courses I believe are long overdue in the standard philosophy curriculum.
Ethics of Climate Change
Slavery and Philosophy (designed)
African Political Philosophy (designed)
Philosophy of Law
God and the Good Life
Introduction to Philosophy
Ethical Theories & Political Philosophy
"Philosophy should matter beyond seminar rooms — rigorous thinking about justice must eventually touch ground."
Phone
(574) 707-1336
Address
Department of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
I welcome conversations about philosophy, climate justice, African philosophy, and opportunities for collaboration — academic or otherwise. I am currently on the job market and available for interviews, campus visits, and discussions about research and teaching.