Staff profile

Jessica joined Durham in 2018 as an Assistant Professor in Political Theory. Between 2015-2018 she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and before that worked for a year each in the Politics Department at the University of York, and the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. She completed her PhD, entitled ‘Policy without Paternalism: A Capability Approach to Legitimate State Action’, at the University of Sheffield.

Jessica’s research interests are in the area of moral and political philosophy, with a particular focus on justice and inequality, disability, paternalism, and epistemic injustice. Her current research is focussed on how disability should be justly treated in public policy, and the importance of mitigating the disadvantages often associated with physical and cognitive impairments without disrespecting those whom these policies affect. She is interested in both more applied questions, such as what disabled individuals are entitled to, the form in which this should be provided, and how policy-makers should approach these questions; as well as more abstract questions, such as how we should understand harm, how this relates to disability, and the status and reliability of individuals’ testimony, especially when they are the subjects of injustice. She is also continuing to work on the understanding of paternalism, and why it is important to avoid paternalist public policy.

• Disability
• Paternalism
• Distributive justice
• Capability approach
• Epistemic injustice
• Well-being and autonomy
• Liberal political thought

• Political Theory

Book review

• Begon, Jessica (2018). Robeyns, Ingrid. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-examined. Cambridge: Open Book, 2017. Pp. 268. $41.23 (cloth); $22.87 (paper). Ethics 129(1): 135-139.
• Begon, Jessica (2018). The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, written by Elizabeth Barnes. Journal of Moral Philosophy 15(1): 100-103.

Chapter in book

• Begon, Jessica (2020). Disability, Rationality, and Justice: Disambiguating Adaptive Preferences. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. Wasserman, David T. & Cureton, Adam Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Journal Article

• Begon, Jessica (2021). Disability: a justice-based account. Philosophical Studies 178(3): 935-962.
• Begon, Jessica (2021). Disadvantage, Disagreement, and Disability: Re-evaluating the Continuity Test. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
• Begon, Jessica (2019). Sexual Perversion: A Liberal Account. Journal of Social Philosophy 50(3): 341-362.
• Begon, Jessica (2017). Capabilities for All? From Capabilities to Function, to Capabilities to Control. Social Theory and Practice 43(1): 154-179.
• Begon, Jessica (2016). Paternalism. Analysis 76(3): 355-373.
• Begon, Jessica (2016). Athletic Policy, Passive Well-Being: Defending Freedom in the Capability Approach. Economics and Philosophy 32(01): 51-73.
• Begon, Jessica (2015). What are Adaptive Preferences? Exclusion and Disability in the Capability Approach. Journal of Applied Philosophy 32(3): 241-257.