Welcome!
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Fordham University. My research interests include autonomy, trust, and consent, the ethics of digital technology and neurotechnology, Buddhist and Japanese philosophy, and the ethicist's role in medicine, science, and technology. I have been funded by the NEH for my work on trust, the NSF for my work on ethics and neurotechnology, and the Crown Prince Akihito Foundation for my work on informed consent in Japan.
In addition to being a professor, I am currently a bioethics consultant for Montefiore Medical Center, a member of the International Neuroethics Society Board of Directors, and an Associate Editor of the journal Neuroethics. I am the former category leader for philosophy for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
From 2018-2020, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Charleston and the Director of Ethics at the Medical University of South Carolina.
From 2017-2018 I was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics. From 2015-2017 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Neurotechnology, University of Washington and at the National Core for Neuroethics, University of British Columbia.
I completed my dissertation as a visiting scholar at Kyoto University's Kokoro Research Center from 2013-2015, funded by a scholarship from the Crown Prince Akihito Foundation. I received my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Hawai'i.
My interest in cross-cultural ethics and neuroscience began at Williams College, where I received a grant to study the ethics of brain death and organ transplantation in Tokyo. This led me to teach English in Niigata, Japan from 2008-2009 with the JET Programme.
I can be reached at lspeckersullivan (at) fordham.edu.