Seminar - February 2022
Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy
The Food Values Research Group and the Stretton Institute will be co-hosting a webinar to discuss Assoc Prof Anne Barnhill and Dr Matteo Bonotti’s upcoming book Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach. In their book, Anne and Matteo show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. In this webinar, which will be moderated by Assoc Prof Georgina Drew, we will be hearing from the authors as well as a panel of experts including Prof Rachel Ankeny, Dr Christopher Mayes and Dr Matthew Ruby.
When: Tuesday, 22nd February 2022, 9-11 AM (ACDT)
Where: Online. See here to register.
Assoc Prof Georgina Drew is an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide and co-director of the Food and Water Futures research program at the Stretton Institute. Her work fits within the fields of environmental anthropology and the critical anthropology of development.
Assoc Prof Anne Barnhill is Core Faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, and an Associate Research Professor in the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program at the Berman Institute. She is a philosopher and bioethicist who works on a range of issues in the ethics of food and agricultural policy, the ethics of public health, and the ethics of influence. Another area of her ongoing research is the ethics of nonrational influence and manipulation, including the ethics of commercial marketing, public health messaging, and political influence.
Dr Matteo Bonotti is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University, having previous taught at Cardiff University, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include linguistic justice, free speech, political liberalism, food justice, and the normative dimensions of partisanship. These interests are diverse but unified by a common underlying theme: ethical pluralism and cultural diversity in contemporary societies, and the question of how the state should respond to them.
Prof Rachel Ankeny is a Professor at the University of Adelaide and convenor of the Food Values Research Group. She is an interdisciplinary teacher and scholar whose areas of expertise cross three fields: history/philosophy of science, bioethics and science policy, and food studies. Her research is considered highly interdisciplinary, scholarly, and generally accessible, evidenced by the fact that her talks are typically attended not only by academics but also members of the general public. She also is well-recognized as a scholar who can translate academic findings in ways that are relevant for stakeholders in a range of sectors and the broader community.
Dr Christopher Mayes is a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University and Research-Affiliate in Sydney Health Ethics at the University of Sydney. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with disciplinary backgrounds in sociology and philosophy. His research interests include sociology of health and food, bioethics, and social and political theory.
Dr Matthew Ruby is a Lecturer in Psychology at La Trobe University. His research centres on “the modern omnivore’s dilemma”– the conflict between people’s desire for meat and the costs of indulging this desire. In particular, he investigates how people decide which (animal) foods are acceptable to eat and which are not, how people reconcile the dissonance between loving meat and loving animals, and how omnivores and vegetarians perceive one another.