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SIF 4th Cohort Fellows - Prach Panchakunathorn, University of Warwick

Curriculum Vitae
 
  • Education
PhD in Philosophy,
Stanford University (USA),
2024
 
MPhil in Philosophy,
University of Cambridge (UK),
2012
 
BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics,
University of Oxford (UK),
2011
Research Project:

My research interests lie in political and moral philosophy. My PhD thesis, titled “Justice for Risk-Takers”, gives an account of when society should correct outcomes of individuals' risk-taking.

My current research project is titled “Fair Substitution in Labour Policy and Beyond”. Many believe that workers are entitled to certain goods — e.g. safety equipment for risky jobs, workplace privacy, freedom from workplace domination.  In practice, however, it’s often impossible or prohibitively expensive to provide all these goods to all workers.  In these cases, one natural thought is that the duty-bearers (employers or governments) should provide substitutes instead.  A question then arises: what would be fair substitutes for these labour protections – what kinds of goods and what amounts?

 The question of fair substitutes for labour protections, however, is a special case of a more general question: what would be a fair substitute for a good that is owed but cannot be provided (without unacceptable consequences)?  Call this the general question of fair substitution.
 

 My research proposes to answer the specific question by systematically answering the general question.  In doing do, the research would have fruitful implications for debates in other policy areas.  This is because the general question of fair substitution arises in diverse policy areas, including social welfare policy, climate policy, and tort law.  For example, a central debate in climate policy is whether non-natural goods (e.g. roads and machineries) can be fair substitutes for natural goods, such as a hospitable climate, for future generations.