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Politics and International Studies

Tom Sorell

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Professor of Politics and Philosophy

Email:
Tel: 02476 528 031
Room: E2.26

Advice and Feedback Hours: Thursdays 3-4pm, Fridays 10-11am.

Research

Prof Sorell leads the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group.

Publications

 

  • Companion to Hobbes

  • Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy

  • Big Data and Democracy

  • The Ethics of Surveillance in times of Emergency

  • Designing in Ethics

Links

Publications

Philpeople Profile

 

Profile

Tom Sorell is Professor of Politics and Philosophy and Head of the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group in PAIS. He was an RCUK Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellow (2013-2016). He was Tang Chun-I Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013. Previously, he was John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics, University of Birmingham. Before that he was Co-Director of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. In 1996-7 he was Fellow in Ethics at Harvard.

He has published extensively in moral and political philosophy, including four books and dozens of journal articles. His most recent published work takes up (i) internet vigilantism; (ii) deepfakes and election manipulation; (iii) the ethics of international state allies spying on one another; (iv) the ethics of state surveillance and mining by security services of large personal data sets; and (v) AI in medical diagnosis and prognosis.

He has worked on many European and RCUK funded research projects. He has also served as a consultant on security-sensitive material in UK universities and on the committee advising the AHRC on the Internet of Things. He is vice-chair of the Home Office Biometrics​ and Forensics Ethics Group and is on the data ethics committee of the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner. In 2020 he was appointed Chair of the West Midlands Police General Ethics Committee.

Recently Appeared

2024

Kelsall, Joshua and Sorell, Tom (2024) Two kinds of vaccine hesitancy. Social Epistemology doi:10.1080/02691728.2024.2330466 Link opens in a new windowISSN 0269-1728. (In Press)

Sorell, Tom (2024) AI-related data ethics oversight in UK policing. Policing : A Journal Of Policy And Practice, 18 . paae016. doi: 10.1093/police/paae016 Link opens in a new windowISSN 1752-4512.

Sorell, Tom (2024) Spying on friends : Angela Merkel's telephone. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence ISSN 0885-0607. (In Press)

2023

Sorell, Tom and Li, Ricky (2023) Digital pathology scanners and contextual integrity. Digital Society, 2 . 56. doi: 10.1007/s44206-023-00085-9Link opens in a new window ISSN 2731-4650.

Sorell, Tom (2023) Deepfakes and political misinformation in U.S. elections. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 27 (3). pp. 363-386. doi: 10.5840/techne20231110190Link opens in a new windowISSN 2691-5928.

Supervision

Hobbes; contemporary liberal political philosophy; the scope of moral theory; emergency and its theory; ethics and security: counter-terrorism; ethics of surveillance; the value of privacy; financial justice: responsibilities for and in the financial crisis; ethics of financial exclusion and microfinance; assistive technology: ethics of telecare; ethics of care robotics; cyber ethics; ethics and artificial intelligence; ethics and the internet of things, including connected vehicles.

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