Lea Bourguignon

I’m a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. I’m also finishing my PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE). Before my PhD, I did an MPhil in Philosophy at University College London (UCL), an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy at LSE, and a BA in Modern History and Politics at Royal Holloway.

I mainly work in Moral Theory. My primary research focusses on the dialectic and problems associated with act-based and rule-based moral theorising, and on contractualist moral theory. Recently, I’ve been formulating and defending a view called Act Contractualism, which borrows from Scanlonian Contractualism but has a different structure which (I argue) allows it to avoid important objections. You can find out more about it on my Research page.

Apart from that, I have ongoing research interests in – and some papers on – Aggregation and AI Ethics, and I’m an affiliate with the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) lab.

I’m also involved in a variety of outreach activities. For instance, I used to organise the London regional of the Ethics Cup, and I’m accredited to teach philosophical thinking to children with The Philosophy Foundation.

I’ve taught a variety of courses, mainly in moral philosophy and applied ethics. In 2024-2025, I’ll be co-teacher responsible for an undergraduate and postgraduate course in Business Ethics at LSE.

You can download my papers here, and follow me on PhilPeople.