People / Ethics Hub@UGA

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At UGA, ethics education is not confined to a single department. It is a dynamic, interdisciplinary endeavor led by a diverse community of faculty scholars. Professors from across the university bring deep expertise and unique perspectives to the study and teaching of ethics, embedding ethical inquiry into fields as varied as philosophy, law, engineering, public health, journalism, business, environmental science, the life sciences, computing, AI, and the arts.

Faculty members draw on both classical ethical theory and contemporary case studies to challenge students to think critically about real-world dilemmas. This cross-disciplinary approach ensures that students encounter ethical reasoning not as an abstract concept but to apply their learning in professional contexts as an essential lens for decision-making. Faculty collaborate across colleges to develop innovative curricula, co-teach interdisciplinary courses, and mentor students pursuing ethics-focused minors and certificates.

Whether addressing bioethics in the life sciences, media ethics in communications, environmental justice in geography and ecology, or business ethics for the private sector, UGA faculty are united by a shared commitment: to prepare students to navigate complexity with integrity, empathy, and intellectual rigor.

Linda Campbell

Linda CampbellLinda Campbell is a professor in the Counseling and Human Development Services Department in the Mary Frances Early College of Education and is the Director of the Center for Counseling, the training clinic for the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program. Campbell is the Chair of the American Psychological Association Ethics Code Task Force conducting a major revision of the APA Ethics Code. She is also the President of the Georgia State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and Chair of the Ethics Item Writing Committee for the National Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology. Campbell is past chair of the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee and the Georgia Psychological Association Ethics Committee. She teaches the doctoral level ethics sequence in the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program and has written several books and articles on professional ethics.

Chris Cuomo

Chris CuomoChris J. Cuomo is a professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and an affiliate faculty member of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the Institute for African-American Studies, and the Institute for Native American Studies. The author and editor of many articles and several books in feminist, postcolonial, and environmental philosophy, Cuomo served as Director of the Institute for Women's Studies from 2006-2009. Her book, The Philosopher Queen, a reflection on post-9/11 anti-war feminist politics, was nominated for a Lambda Award and an APA book award, and her work in ecofeminist philosophy and creative interdisciplinary practice has been influential among those seeking to bring together social justice and environmental concerns, as well as theory and practice. She has been a recipient of research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Ms. Foundation, the National Council for Research on Women, and the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, and she has been a visiting faculty member at Cornell University, Amherst College, and Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

Jeremy Davis

Jeremy DavisJeremy Davis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy. His research focuses on issues surrounding the ethics of harming, particularly in areas where an institution claims a certain kind of monopoly on the use of force (i.e., war, policing, medicine). His work has been published in Bioethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of Applied Philosophy, and several others. Jeremy regularly teaches ethics courses at UGA, including an “Inside-Out” course (Criminal Justice Ethics) taught at the Athens-Clarke County Jail. Through a local non-profit, Common Good Atlanta, Jeremy also teaches a summer course in philosophy to incarcerated students at Whitworth Prison as part of Bard College's Clemente Course in the Humanities. He serves on the Board of Directors for Georgians for End-of-Life Options (GAELO), and he is an Organizational Ethics Specialist for Compass Ethics, an ethics advisory group. 

Melissa Fahmy

Melissa FahmyMelissa Seymour Fahmy is Professor of Philosophy. Fahmy’s area of specialization is normative ethics, with a focus on Kantian ethical theory. Her research interests are oriented around the Kantian duties of love and respect. Her recent work on instrumentalization, exploitation, and consent investigates some ways we fail to treat persons as end in themselves. Fahmy’s work has been published in Kantian Review, Bioethics, The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. She regularly teaches Introduction to Ethics, Ethical Theory, Biomedical Ethics, Ethics of Food, Philosophy of Sport and Games, and Advanced Topics in Biomedical Ethics. She is a member of UGA’s Teaching Academy. 

Harrison Frye

Harrison FryeHarrison Frye teaches and researches political theory as Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. His research focuses on the ethics of markets and the ethics of online shaming. His published work on these topics appears in venues such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Journal of Political Philosophy, and Business Ethics Quarterly. Prior to coming to University of Georgia, Frye was a Junior Faculty Fellow at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, where he taught business ethics.

Kelly Happe

Kelly HappeKelly Happe, Professor of Communication Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies is a rhetorical theorist and critic working at the intersection of feminism, science studies, biopolitics, and Marxist theory. Her scholarship has appeared in Theory and Event, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, New Genetics and Society, Philosophy and Rhetoric, and other venues.  Her book, The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity After the Human Genome Project was published by NYU Press and is winner of the 2014 Diamond Anniversary Book Award from the National Communication Association. Happe is also the recipient of the 2014 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award for her essay "The Body of Race: Toward a Rhetorical Theory of Racial Ideology,” also from the National Communication Association. She is co-editor of the 2018 book Biocitizenship: On Bodies, Belonging, and the Politics of Life.

Cecilia Herles

Cecilia HerlesCecilia Herles, the Assistant Director of the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy (2006) and graduate certificates in Women’s Studies and Environmental Ethics from the University of Georgia. She teaches Feminist Theory, The Gendered Politics of Food, and Environment, Gender, Race, Class. Her publications cover topics such as ecological feminist ethics and feminist pedagogy. She is currently working on ethics-related projects on food insecurity, food waste, literacy, the arts, intergenerational connections, and community. She is a Fellow in The Georgia Women’s Policy Institute to advocate for building a more just and equitable Georgia.

Andres Matlock

Andres MatlockAndres Matlock is Assistant Professor of Classics. Since his dissertation (“Time and Experience in Cicero’s Ethical Dialogues”, UCLA 2020), much of his research and writing has centered on ethics, understood especially as one of the main branches of Greco-Roman philosophy. As a comparativist and philologist, Andres’ ethical interests often intersect with other intellectual currents in both ancient and modern texts, such as ecology (“Quae natura caduca est: Cicero and Lucretius on Ecological Change”, Ciceroniana Online 7.2 [2023]: 543–577), ontology (“Shadow and Stone: Niobe in Stoicism and Platonism”, in Mario Telò and Andrew Benjamin eds, Niobes: Antiquity/Modernity/Critical Theory, The Ohio State University Press [2024]: 114-128), and psychology (Forthcoming book: Coincidences of Mind and Text in Cicero and Freud).

Aaron Meskin

Aaron MeskinAaron Meskin is Head and Professor of UGA’s Department of Philosophy. Meskin’s primary areas of research are philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of food, and he has published two co-authored articles on ethical issues related to food. “Delicious but Immoral? Ethical Information Influences Consumer Expectations and Experience of Food,” published in Frontiers in Psychology, addresses the psychological effects of ethically relevant information on expectations and experiences of food. “Morality and aesthetics of food,” published in The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, explores the conceptual relationship between morality and aesthetics in the culinary domain.

Thanassis Samaras

Thanassis SamarasThanassis Samaras is an Associate Professor of Philosophy. He is interested in the evolution of key ethical terms in antiquity, and in Greek ethical theory more generally. He has published on matters such as the theory of virtue of Plato and Aristotle, the ethical and moral psychology requirements for citizenship in the work of these two philosophers, the ethical dimensions of Plato’s concept of love in the Symposium and the Republic, the connection between noble birth, moral excellence and the idea of leisure from archaic Greece to the late Christian era, as well as the ethical ideas of the sophists Protagoras and Thrasymachus. 

Nick Schuster

Nick SchusterNick Schuster is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. He received his PhD in philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University, where he managed MINT Lab. Schuster’s research focuses broadly on moral agency. One series of papers examines how inner conflict can make moral agents good, bad, better, and worse. Another develops a deontological model of moral skill in order to account for how good moral agents (learn to) operate within systems of moral constraints and permissions. And a third, funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, considers how digital technologies interact with moral agency, understood in terms of moral skill. Nick is also working on an ARC Linkage project on socially responsible insurance and artificial intelligence. His work has been published in Philosophical Studies, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and The Journal of Ethics.

Piers Stephens

Piers StephensPiers Stephens is a professor in the Philosophy Department here at UGA. He is the editor of the journal Ethics and the Environment as well as philosophy reviews editor of the journal Environmental Values. Originally from Britain, his research interests are in environmental ethics and the history of ideas, especially ideas of freedom, nature and the good in liberal and American pragmatist traditions of thought. His works have appeared in various scholarly essay collections and handbooks, and he has regularly contributed to academic journals including Environmental Ethics, Environmental Politics, Ethics and the Environment, The Pluralist and Environmental Values. 

R. Alfred “Alfie” Vick

Alfred VickAlfred Vick is the Georgia Power Professor in Environmental Ethics at the University of Georgia and Director of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. He is a licensed landscape architect and a LEED Fellow. His work focuses on preserving and enhancing the functioning of natural systems while effectively and attractively integrating human use. At the University of Georgia’s College of Environment & Design he teaches landscape ecology and sustainable design, collaborates with other researchers in the Sustainability and Landscape Performance Lab and serves on the Faculty of the Institute of Native American Studies. His academic research focuses on green infrastructure and sustainable site design, native plant communities, and American Indian ethnobotany.

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