Dr Andrew Kirton

Profile

My background is in philosophy. I did my BA (2006-2009), MRes (2011-2013) and PhD (2014-2018) at the University of Manchester, where I also worked as a teaching assistant in philosophy. After my PhD I worked on a British Academy project based at Blavatnik School of Govt. in Oxford, researching the crisis of trust in institutions and corporations. I joined Leeds as a Lecturer in Applied Ethics with IDEA in Sept 2018 just as that project was finishing up.

Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Student Education (Student Opportunities and Futures)

Research interests

My published research explores trust in interpersonal relationships and societies. My ongoing background interest is in understanding what morality is and how it comes out of our basic wiring as social and emotional creatures who need to trust one another. In thinking about that I like to use insights from psychology and psychotherapy, especially attachment theory and personality development. I also think about these things generally in terms of agency and biological life, evolution and ecosystems.

I’m interested in pedagogy and am currently putting together an edited collection exploring the social forces that gatekeep philosophy as an academic discipline. In the background I think about social epistemology: how groups congeal around bodies of knowledge, what standards of rigour they collectively apply, and the psychology of reasoning, rationalising and cognitive dissonance that underpins this process.

I have done a lot of teaching on AI ethics over the years so I’ve also ended up recently thinking about those social epistemology questions in relation to AI’s current effect on writing, thinking and knowledge transmission: what happens when we rely on AI outputs as opposed to human testimony.

I currently supervise PhD students working on: Obligations around trust and risk (Chris McClean); Ethical frameworks for social media platforms (Amalia Kontesi); Chronic health anxiety, self-trust and epistemic injustice (Georgie Armitage); Romantic relationships with AI chatbots (Tom Wardell)

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) Philosophy
• MRes Philosophy
• PhD Philosophy
• PGCert Interpersonal and Counselling Skills

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Student education

I am the Programme Lead for the MSc in AI, Ethics and Society, run by the Leeds Institute for Societal Futures.

With IDEA The Ethics Centre I primarily teach / have taught on the following topics:

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, data ethics, autonomous systems

Philosophy and ethics of science (Is science better than non- /pseudo-science? Should scientists be activists? Issues around trust in science, ethics of pharmaceutical companies and recreational drugs)

Issues in the constellation of trust: privacy, confidentiality, consent, autonomy

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships
• Centre for Theoretical Philosophy

Current postgraduate researchers

• Georgie Armitage
• Tom Wardell