* european respiratory society congress. vienna, austria (2024).
h e l l o !!!
my name’s josh. i am an academic researcher and educator in ethics and philosophy. i received my ph.d. in philosophy in 2024 from monash university, where my dissertation — data over dialogue: why artificial intelligence is unlikely to humanise medicine — was awarded the departmental prize for “best ph.d. thesis in philosophy and bioethics”
i am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the university of copenhagen's center for philosophy of AI. previously, i was a postdoctoral fellow in the section for philosophy and history of ideas at aarhus university. in june 2026, i will join macquarie university’s ethics and agency research centre as a macquarie lighthouse fellow, where i will lead a three-year project titled “in the AI of the beholder: the ethics of AI beauty assessments in aesthetic medicine.”
i have been awarded visiting research fellowships at the university of zurich’s institute for biomedical ethics and history of medicine and at FAU erlangen’s centre for philosophy and AI research. i also hold research affiliations with the university of copenhagen's pioneer centre for artificial intelligence and with the australian research council's centre of excellence for automated decision-making and society
i’m primarily interested in normative questions that emerge at the intersection of ethics, technology, and healthcare: how should the introduction of AI change the moral landscape of healthcare delivery and medical decision-making? do these changes necessitate revisions to our understandings of familiar moral concepts (e.g. trust, agency, fairness)? where should we — that is, patients, citizens, and users — welcome or resist (aspects of) the deployment, design, or application of these technologies? my work aims to address these and other questions in a manner that is practically motivated, accessibly presented, analytically rigorous, and empirically engaged
i am available for interview, speaking, and consulting engagements. you can contact me via email (see website footer)
* a weird bunker-like structure i saw in reykjavic, iceland (2026)
n e w s !!!
* three very sweet and precious lil danish holstein cows i met when i lived in århus, denmark (2024).
new paper (5/3/26): “federation opacity and the promise of federated learning” (with anders søgaard, angela ballantyne, and ruben pauwels), the american journal of bioethics [doi] / [pdf]
new paper (4/2/2026): “in defense of post-hoc explanations in medical ai” (with lauritz munch and jens christian bjerring), hastings center report [doi] /[pdf]
new paper (19/11/25): “continuous learning as a threat to care” (with robert sparrow, zachary daus, mark howard, and patrick kwan), health and technology [doi]/ [pdf]
new podcast appearance (7/9/25): aitec (ai and technology ethics circle) [mp3]
new pre-print (24/6/25): “mechanistic interpretability needs philosophy” (with iwan williams, ninell oldenburg, ruchira dhar, constanza fierro, nina rajcic, sandrine schiller, filippos stamatiou, and anders søgaard) [doi] / [pdf]
new podcast appearance (15/5/25): death by algorithm [mp3]
new pre-print (29/4/25): “federated learning, ethics, and the double black box problem in medical ai” (with anders søgaard, angela ballantyne, and ruben pauwels) [doi] /[pdf]