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Research

Most of my research is in political, legal, and moral philosophy. I work on discrimination (especially caste and socioeconomic discrimination), the theory of equality, normative ethics, global justice and development, and justice in health and population-level bioethics.

 

Much of my recent work focuses on how to best understand discrimination and what can be done in response to discrimination. I am currently mainly thinking about two forms of discrimination: socioeconomic discrimination and caste discrimination. Most discrimination laws do not prohibit socioeconomic discrimination nor do they prohibit class discrimination or poverty discrimination. I believe this is a mistake. In my research, I explore the moral status of socioeconomic discrimination as well as how discrimination law can and should address socioeconomic discrimination.

 

In my work on caste discrimination, I explore how philosophical thinking about discrimination and equality can help us understand better controversies around how caste is to be tackled. For example, in my work on reservations (affirmative action), I challenge the tendency to see the fight against caste primarily through a legal and constitutional lens. Instead, I suggest that many questions of how to contest caste are political questions.

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Below you can find my published work.

 

Publications:

Must Longtermists Wish Us All Dead? A Quadrilemma

Journal of Applied Philosophy (with Nir Eyal and Shai Meiri).

2026

Addressing Threats to Future Global Health—What is the Right Timeframe?

The Lancet (with Chrisoula Andreou, Mark Budolfson, Tim Campbell, Maddalena Ferranna, Anders Herlitz, Petra Kosonen, Kacper Kowalczyk, Adam J. Lerner, Andreas L. Mogensen, Michael Otsuka, Melinda Roberts, Robert Steel, Daniel Wikler, Bridget Williams, Nir Eyal).

2025

When We May Not Experiment: On the Ethics of Randomized Controlled Trials in Policy and Development

Free & Equal, 2(1) (2026): 156-87.

2024

Health and Health Care

In Joshua J. Kassner (ed.), Encylopedia of Global Justice (New York: Springer, 2026).

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Private Discrimination, Marriage Markets, and Caste

Theoria, 91(3) (2025): e12536.

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Equal and Ashamed? Egalitarianism, Anti-Discrimination and Redistribution.

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 24(1) (2025): 72-97.

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The Poverty Discrimination Puzzle

Political Philosophy, 1(2) (2024): 292-320 (with Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen).

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The Challenge for Coronavirus Vaccine Testing

Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, 28(1) (2024): 30-52.

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Constraints, You, and Your Victims

Noûs, 57(4) (2023): 942-57.

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Ethical and legal race-responsive vaccine allocation

Bioethics, 37(8) (2023): 814-21 (with Nir Eyal).

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Better Vaguely Right than Precisely Wrong in Effective Altruism: the Problem of Marginalism

Economics & Philosophy, 39(1) (2023): 152-69 (with Nicolas Côté).

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Limits to Aggregation and Uncertain Rescues

Utilitas, 34(1) (2022): 70-83.

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Paired Publication: A Way to Lower One Barrier between Philosophical Insight and Bioethics

American Journal of Bioethics, 22(12) (2022): 33-35 (with Nir Eyal and Monica Magalhães).

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COVID vaccine prioritization in low- and middle-income countries may justifiably depart from high-income countries’ age priorities

Clinical Infectious Diseases, 75(S1) (2022): S93-97 (with Nir Eyal, Anca Gheaus, Axel Gosseries, Monica Magalhães, Thierry Ngosso, Viroj Tangcharoensathien, Isa Trifan, Andrew Williams).

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Aggregation, Balancing, and Respect for the Claims of Individuals

Utilitas, 33(1) (2021): 17-34.

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Contractualism, Complaints, and Risk

Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, 19(2) (2021): 111-47.

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Prioritizing between second-generation SARS-CoV-2 vaccines through low-dosage challenge studies

International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 105 (2021): P307-11 (with Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Nir Eyal).

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Letter to the Editor - SARS-CoV-2 Human Challenge Studies

New England Journal of Medicine, 385 (2021): 1727-28 (with Nir Eyal).

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Review of Faces of Inequality by Sophia Moreau

Economics & Philosophy, 37(3) (2021): 494-500.

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Why It Does Not Matter What Matters: Relation R, Personal Identity, and Moral Theory

Philosophical Quarterly, 70(278) (2020): 178-98.

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© Copyright 2026 By Bastian Steuwer

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