Paula Casal

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

Humanities

Paula Casal is an ICREA Professor at the Law Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She was previously a Lecturer and a Reader in Moral and Political Philosophy at Reading University (2004-8), and a Lecturer at Keele University (1996-2004). She was also Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University (1999-2000), Keele Junior Research Fellow, also at Harvard (2000-1), Hoover Fellow at Université Catholique de Louvain (2001-02), and Leverhulme Research Fellow at Oxford University (2002-4). Her work has appeared in such journals as Ethics, Economics and Philosophy, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Political Philosophy, Hypatia, Political Studies and Utilitas. She is an Associate Editor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics, co-editor of LEAP, President of the Great Ape Project-Spain, Board Member of Academics Stand Against Poverty, and co-director of the UPF Center for Animal Ethics.


Research interests

I work on how social institutions should distribute resources. This requires assessing the general principles (such as equality, priority, and sufficiency) governing distributive decisions as well as more specific policies designed to promote social or global justice. I am particularly concerned with policy responses to global poverty, climate change and gender inequality, including various forms of taxation. I am also interested in the intersection between ethics and primatology, including the origins of empathy and resource-sharing as well as violence and gender inequality, the moral status of non-human animals, and the distinction between natural and social inequality. I have also written about how the costs of raising children should be distributed, sea-access for landlocked states, the moral limits to religious accommodation, and the difference medical ethics draws between therapy and enhancement.

Selected publications

Casal P, Pogge T & Steiner H 2016, ‘Un reparto más justo del planeta’, Trotta, Madrid.

Casal P  2016, ‘Por qué la suficiencia no basta’, Igualitarismo, ed. Gallego J & Bullemore T, Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos: 269-303.

Casal P 2016, ‘L´amour, pas la guerre: sur la chimie du bien et du mal’, Projections. Revue culturelle pluridisciplinaire, 9.

Casal P 2016, ‘The Death of the Zoo. Reflections on the Death of Harambe the Gorilla’, Metode. 


Selected research activities

Grants: MINECO Retos DER 2016-80471-C2-2-R, Justice, Legitimacy and Global Institutions, PI.

Edited: 2016 LEAP Symposium on “Puzzles on Gender Inequality”, with papers by J Mora, JP Vandamme, V Ottonelli, G Schouten, A de Miguel and P van Parijs.

Organized: Global Animals, Inaugural Conference of UPF Center for Animal Ethics 15/3. Co-organized: Fourth Annual Conference of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy 1-3/6.

Co-Directed (with N Almirón): UPF Center for Animal Ethics, organising numerous activities.

Delivered: Contribution International Panel on Social Progress Report, Princeton Univ. 20/2. Masterclass with Noam Chomsky, United Nations Univ. Center for Globalization, Culture and Mobility, 7/11. Two keynote addresses at Inaugural Conference of Academics Stand Against Poverty- Chile, U. Valparaiso 5/12, Keynote with respondents, Law School, Univ. de Chile, 7/12.

Supervised to completion: Catia Faria’s PhD Animal Ethics Goes Wild, Darian Heim’s PhD Migrant Tongues, Africa Bouzàs MA Gone with the Waves. Responding to Small Island States Existential Threat, Laura de la Sierra’s MA Children of Men. What we Owe to Domesticated Animals, Ian Harper’s MA If You Are and Egalitarian How Come You Eat Meat, Celeste Bell’s MA Brainwashed.

Evaluated: ERC Advanced Grants.