Joel Michael Reynolds’s research and public engagement center on foundational issues concerning ethics, society, and embodiment. What does flourishing mean in the genomic age?  How can one be ethical in an unjust world? How do our bodies shape experience, understanding, and judgment? Seeking to bring reflective and empirical insights together, he engages work across the humanities and social sciences, with special emphasis on the role of narrative and lived experience.

As the Rice Family Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities for 2017-19, Joel contributes to the new Hastings Center Initiative in Bioethics and the Humanities, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and private donors. Joel’s research at the Center focuses on questions of genomic responsibility and other issues pertaining to the inaugural theme of the initiative: the gift and weight of genomic knowledge. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Chiasmi International, and The Review of Communication.

Joel’s work has won multiple awards, including the 2016 M.C. Dillon Memorial Lecture Award at the International Merleau-Ponty Circle and the 2016 Graduate Student Paper Award at the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities. Joel has previously been selected as an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Graduate Teaching Fellow, Emory ORDER Teacher-Scholar Fellow, Emory Arts & Sciences Fellow, and the first Laney Graduate School Disability Studies Fellow. In 2015, he was chosen as a delegate for the international bioethics conference, BEINGS: A Global Summit on Biotechnology and the Ethical Imagination, held in Atlanta. He is part of an international team of researchers and policymakers who are developing stakeholder-driven guidelines for the use of cellular biotechnologies.

Joel received his BA magna cum laude in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon in 2009. He was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won the Honors College’s President’s Award for Distinguished Thesis. Joel received his MA (2014) and PhD (2016) in Philosophy from Emory University.

In the fall, Joel will begin a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

IN THE MEDIA

AEON on The Politics of Prognosis

TIME on gene-editing, disability, and family

TEDx talk on ethics, disability, and family

Huffington Post on Trump and disability

The UnMute Podcast interview on philosophy, technology, stigma, and disability

SELECTED SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS & COMMENTARIES

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Infotality: On Living, Loving, and Dying Through Information,” The American Journal of Bioethics 2018, 18(2): 33-35

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Being Better Bodies,” The Hastings Center Report 2017, 47(6): 46-47

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Toward a Critical Theory of Harm: Ableism, Normativity, and Transability (BIID),” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine 2016; 16(1): 37-45.

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Infinite Responsibility in the Bedpan: Response Ethics, Care Ethics, and the Phenomenology of Dependency Work,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2016; 31(4): 779-94. DOI: 10.1111/hypa.12292, 2016.

Joel Michael Reynolds, “The Ableism of Quality of Life Judgments in Disorders of Consciousness: Who Bears Epistemic Responsibility?” American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 2016; 7(1): 59-61. DOI:10.1080/21507740.2016.1150911.

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Feeding Upon Death: Pain, Possibility, and Transformation in S. Kay Toombs and Kafka’s ‘The Vulture’” in Jahrbuch Literatur und Medizin, ed. Florian Steger, Band VI: 135-54.

You can also follow Joel on PhilPapers, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, SSRN, and his personal website.