Tess Johnson

Stipendiary Lecturer in Philosophy

Teaching

I teach tutorials at University College, primarily for PPEists. My main teaching papers include Moral Philosophy, Ethics 103, and Practical Ethics 128. In addition, I have supervised undergraduate PPEists’ philosophy research projects, and undergraduate Medicine students’ special studies projects. I have previously taught a short course on reproductive ethics for the Faculty of Philosophy.

Research

I am a postdoctoral researcher based at the Ethox Centre, in the Nuffield Department of Public Health. My work is in bioethics, centring on ethical issues in public health and pandemic preparedness, surveillance, and response. I am currently examining ethical justifications for coercion in public health policies, and ethical questions relating to antimicrobial resistance. Alongside this work, I am concerned with global catastrophic biological risks, and moral motivations for coordinated international interventions to mitigate these risks. In my previous work as a DPhil student in philosophy at the University of Oxford, I conducted ethical analyses of human genomic enhancement interventions and other issues in reproductive ethics.

Selected Publications

Anomaly, J. and Johnson, T. (forthcoming). “Human Enhancement: Key Concepts”, in F. Jotterand and M. Ienca (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement, London: Routledge Press.

Johnson, T. (forthcoming). “Genetic Immunization: Enhancement, or public health measure?”, in S. Hostiuc (ed.), Clinical Ethics at the Crossroads of Genetic and Reproductive Technologies, Amsterdam: Elsevier (2nd edn.).

Johnson, T. (Forthcoming). “Considering the Collective in Ethical Decision-Making Concerning Non-Medical Uses of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing”, American Journal of Bioethics.

Johnson, T. and Matlock, W. (2022). “Justifying the More Restrictive Alternative: Ethical Justifications for One Health AMR Policies Rely on Empirical Evidence”, Public Health Ethics, doi: 10.1093/phe/phac025.

Schaefer, G.O., Johnson, T., Friets, R., Menon, S., and Savulescu, J. (2022). “Vaccination of individuals lacking decision-making capacity during a public health emergency”, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, doi: 10.1093/jlb/lsac030.

Anantharaman, M., Schaefer, O., Johnson, T., and Savulescu, J. (2022). “Funder Priority for Vaccines: Implications of a Weak Lockean Claim”, Bioethics, doi: 10.1111/bioe.13075.

Johnson, T., Kollnig, K., and Dewitte, P. (2022). “Towards responsible, lawful and ethical data processing: Patient data in the UK”, Internet Policy Review, doi: 10.14763/2022.1.1638.

Johnson, T. (2021). “Free to Decide: The Positive Moral Right to Reproductive Choice According to the Capabilities Approach” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 31(3): 303-326.

Johnson, T. (2021). “A Trade-Off: Antimicrobial Resistance and COVID-19” Bioethics, doi: 10.1111/bioe.12928.

Johnson, T. (2021). “Enhancing the Collectivist Critique: Individualist and Collectivist Accounts in the Human Enhancement Debate” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, doi:10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7.