Technologies increasingly shape the moral landscape of our societies. In response, approaches such as Design for Values (DfV) seek to embed moral values like privacy, justice, and sustainability directly into the design process. But while DfV has many methods for eliciting what people currently value, it offers virtually no guidance regarding which values are the right ones to design for, which means designers risk baking harmful or mistaken values into the technologies we all live with.
This project, named TechnoMoralXP, tackles that gap head-on by building a moral epistemology for DfV. Its guiding idea is that our emotional and perceptual encounters with morally significant situations—moral experiences—are central to justified moral judgement, and can be harnessed in design.
What you do
- Develop a new conceptualisation of techno-moral experiences and distinguish them from neighbouring notions.
- Analyse the epistemic roles such experiences can play in justifying design decisions and investigate their limitations.
- Integrate your work with that of another work package, where a second postdoc builds a practical design toolkit based on your findings.
- Publish in leading ethics and technology-ethics journals.
- Help shape a new research frontier between moral epistemology, technology ethics and design.
- Join a supportive, international team in one of the world's strongest groups in the ethics of technology at a leading technical university.
What they ask
- A PhD (completed, or very close to completion) in philosophy, with strength in metaethics, moral epistemology, ethics, or philosophy of emotion — or a closely related area.
- A track record, appropriate to career stage, of high-quality research and writing in relevant areas of philosophy.
- Genuine interest in the ethics of technology and/or in Design for Values; prior work in these areas is welcome but not required.
- Competence to work in an interdisciplinary team spanning philosophy and design, and to connect abstract epistemology to applied design questions.
- Excellent command of English and excellent academic writing skills.
- Enthusiasm for contributing to the group's wider intellectual life and, on occasion, its educational activities (up to 10% of the time).
How to apply
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