Serena Olsaretti

Serena Olsaretti

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Humanities

I have been an ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra since 2010, where I am a member of the Department of Law, the Law & Philosophy research group, and of the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy. I have been an elected member of the Academia Europaea since 2019. Prior to joining ICREA I was Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. John's College (2001-2010). I had first arrived at Cambridge in 1999, as a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, after studying at the University of Oxford between 1990 and 1999. At Oxford I obtained a B.A., an M.Phil. and a DPhil.degree and was funded by a Rhodes European Scholarship and a British Council Chevening Scholarship.

Research interests

My research is in moral and political philosophy. My current research focuses mostly on issues concerning justice and the family. One of these is what society owes the family for its role in securing demographic replacement. A book I am working on, titled Parental Justice, asks what a fair distribution of the costs and benefits of children is, between parents, non parents and across generations. Other issues my work tackles are how liberal states should respond to procreation and migration as two sources of demographic renewal; what normative assumptions underpin estimates of the carbon footprint of procreation which environmental scientists provide; whether parents' partiality towards their children can be reconciled with equality of opportunity. Some of this work also contributes to foundational debates on how to understand the demands of equality, on exploitation and on the principle of fair play. In the past I have also worked on freedom; well-being; responsibility.

Selected publications

- Bou-Habib P & Olsaretti S 2024, 'Children or Migrants as Public Goods?', Political Studies 72, 4: 1313-1331

Selected research activities

- Chinese edition of Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, The Commercial Press of Beijing, 2024
 
- Masterclass on Justice and Demographic Replacement, University of Fribourg, 30 May-2 June 2024
- Associate editor Law, Ethics & Philosophy
 
- Editorial board: Journal of Applied Philosophy; Economics and Philosophy; Utilitas
 
- Referee for Oxford University Press; Analysis; Ethics; Ethical Theory & Moral Practice; Journal of Ethics
 
- External evaluator: University of Western Ontario; Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities
- Investigador garante (with JJ Moreso) of subproject on Evidence, Politics and the Public Sphere, Maria de Maeztu Grant for the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy