I’m a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, specialising in moral and political philosophy and in social epistemology, including political epistemology. I served as Head of Department from 2017 to 2020.

Before coming to Warwick, I was a postdoc at Harvard University and then an assistant professor at the University of Basel. I’ve held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU and the Murphy Institute at Tulane University.

I am a past editor of Economics and Philosophy  and a past associate editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

Research

My main philosophical contributions to date are in political philosophy and social and political epistemology. I have also published on the philosophy of economics and on health equity. More recently, I have started to work on issues in moral philosophy, especially meta-ethics and moral epistemology.

I have written extensively on political legitimacy. I am interested in the question of what, if anything, justifies democracy. I have published a book on Democratic Legitimacy and I am the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Political Legitimacy”. My new book on The Grounds of Political Legitimacy (OUP 2023) explores the normative foundations of conceptions of political legitimacy. I started this project when I held a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship in 2010/11.

Relatedly, I'be been involved in an AHRC-funded collaborative research project on Norms for the New Public SphereLink opens in a new window (2019 - 2022).The project explored the norms that can underpin the regulation of social media platforms in relation to their increasingly important role in political debate. in a spin-off from this project, together with Dr Jonathan Heawood from the Public Interest News Foundation, we've started to explore a co-creational model for the news media that combines a commitment to truth with a commitment to public participation.

A more recent research project focuses on issues in moral philosophy, especially moral normativity and moral epistemology. This research project explores questions such as the following. Are reasons fundamental normative facts? What is the role of fittingness in moral normativity? And how do we gain moral knowledge?

New Book

Publications

• Full list of publications
• Academia pageLink opens in a new window
• Google Scholar pageLink opens in a new window
• PhilPapers profileLink opens in a new window

Teaching

• Introduction to Philosophy
• Ethics
• Contemporary Political Philosophy
• Moral Epistemology
• Philosophy of Social Science
• Philosophy and Economics (with Peter Hammond)
• Topics in Moral and Political Philosophy (MA module)
• Democratic Legitimacy and Justification (MA module, with Matthew Clayton)

Public Writing, Interviews, and Podcasts

• BBC In our Time, episode on Rawls' Theory of Justice (January 2023)
• Article in IAI news on "The Blurred Line between Facts and Value" (November 2022)
• Interview by Daniele Lorenzini and Federico Testa on Biopolitics and Democracy (April 2022)
• Article in The New Statesman on “Can Authoritarianism Ever be Justified?" (August 2021)
• Blog post for Warwick Knowledge Centre on “The Experts are Back – But How Much Political Power Should Experts Have?Link opens in a new window” (March 2020)
• Blog post at Open for Debate on “Political Debate in the Digital AgeLink opens in a new window” (February 2020)
• InterviewLink opens in a new window with Lisa Bortolotti on Norms for the New Public SphereLink opens in a new window research project (December 2019)
• Article in The Conversation on social media rules for influential politicians (July 2019)
• Interview by Richard Marshall at 3:16 am (April 2018)

• Filmed interview on the grounds of political legitimacy by Luc Foisneau, CNRS (May 2017)

• Blog post at Philosophers' Magazine on the 2017 general election (May 2017)

• Video of a public debate in Opatija on "Democracy or Decision-making by Experts"? (June 2016)
• Blog post at The Forum on "Democracy or Decision-making by Experts"? (2016)
• Podcast of panel discussion at LSE: Is Politics based on Morality? (2015)
• Podcast interview (in German) about my article 'The Human Right to Political Participation' (2014)
• Postcast interview about my book Democratic Legitimacy by Robert Talisse at New Books in Philosophy (2011)

Further Links

• Centre for Ethics, Law, and Public Affairs (CELPA)
• Warwick PPE Programme

Contact

E-mail: f.peter@warwick.ac.uk

Office: Social Sciences Building, S2.57

Advice and feedback hours in term 3: by appointment

Twitter: @annefabpeter