Professor Lisa Ellis | University of Otago (2024)

Director, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Programme

Contact details

2C14, second floor, central corridor, Burns Building, 95 Albany Street
Tel +64 3 479 8727
Email lisa.ellis@otago.ac.nz
academia.edu
Twitter
Curriculum Vitae

Academic qualifications

1999: PhD Berkeley
1992: MA Berkeley
1990: BA Princeton

Research interests

Lisa Ellis is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics programme at the University of Otago. Lisa’s work investigates how we can make policy decisions that serve our interests in flourishing now and in the future. Her current project, "the collective implications of discrete decisions," includes papers in environmental democracy, the collective ethics of flying, the value of biodiversity losses, climate adaptation justice, and species extinction.

Lisa is past president of the Association for Political Theory, former section editor of the Journal of Politics, and a current editor of Political Theory. Lisa’s work has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and New Zealand’s Deep South National Science Challenge.

Read about Lisa’s recent work: NZ Herald, on anti-natalism, Guardian, on emissions reduction, Newsroom, "Playing chicken with the government"; Stuff, "Beach Road"; Stuff, "Climate Myths Debunked"

Hear about Lisa’s recent work: research seminar, 'Maximum Scholarly Value for Minimal Harm: Practical Climate Ethics for Academics' (recording here); Deep South webinar on adaptation, 95bfm on climate cooperation, Dialogues podcast from Snodger Media; Radio New Zealand, "Sea-Level Rise Threat" ; Lisa talks to Jesse Mulligan on RNZ Afternoons.

Publications

Current projects

• "The Ethics of Net Zero," ARC project with Garrett Cullity, Christian Barry, Catriona McKinnon, and Stephen Gardiner; 2023-2026
• "Climate Reporting Effectiveness," XRB project with Sebastian Gehricke, Sara Walton, and Renzhu Zhang, 2023-2025
• "A Just Transitions Guide for Aotearoa New Zealand," MBIE project with Catherine Leining, et al., 2022-2023
• 'On All Fronts: Overcoming Barriers to Change in the Aviation Sector (and beyond)' with James Higham and James Maclaurin
• 'Social Contract Theory' for the Cambridge Dictionary of Political Thought (eds Richard Bellamy, Carol Atack, Christopher Brooke, and Leigh Jenco)
• 'The Collective Implications of Discrete Decisions in Environmental Policy'
• 'How Carbon Taxation Can Facilitate Just Interaction in a Non-Ideal World: the Case of International Aviation Fuel'

Publications

• Will Dreyer & Elisabeth Ellis (2022): Do New Zealand select committees still make a difference? The case of the climate change response (Zero Carbon) amendment bill 2019, Political Science, DOI: 10.1080/00323187.2021.2019591
• "Theorising Environmental Politics," in Environmental Politics in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, forthcoming 2022), edited by Julie MacArthur and Maria Bargh.
• "Just transition to climate resilient coastal communities in Aotearoa New Zealand" (2021). Policy Quarterly 17 (3): 23-30. https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/view/7129
• Benjamin Dudley Tombs, Ben France-Hudson, Janet Stephenson, and Elisabeth Ellis, "Property Purgatory" (2021). Policy Quarterly 17 (1), February 2021; pp. 50-56.
• "Sectoral Responsibility for Climate Change: Is Aviation Exceptionalism Defensible?" In Climate Justice: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals (Routledge, 2020), edited by Jeremy Moss and Lachlan Umbers, chapter 4.
• "Public Property, Collective Integrity, and Environmental Justice" (2020). Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2020.1744077.
• "Introduction" to special issue on "Political Philosophy and What the People Think, by Avner de Shalit," 2021. Australasian Philosophical Review 4.4. DOI: 10.1080/24740500.2021.1876410
• Bioethics panel [Parke, E., Russell, R., Armstrong, D., Ellis, E., Hohneck, M., Iorns, C., Knight, J., Litten, K., MacDonald, E., Maclaurin, J., Speedy, C., Steeves, T., Watane, K., Wehi, P.] (2019). "Predator Free New Zealand: Social, Cultural, and Ethical Challenges." BioHeritage Challenge. 26 pp.
• "How Should the Risks of Sea Level Rise be Shared?" Working paper commissioned by the Deep South National Science Challenge. Submitted August 2018; published December 2018. 20,677 words. (link)
• Higham, J.E.S., Ellis, E. & Maclaurin, J. (2018). "Tourist aviation emissions: A problem of collective action." Journal of Travel Research (published online May 2018 in the JTR and the Foundations series). doi/10.1177/0047287518769764.
• "Democracy as a Constraint and Possibility for Environmental Action," The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2016), edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg.
• "Kant's Political Philosophy," Oxford Bibliographies (2015).
• The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Michael T. Gibbons, Editor-in-Chief, Diana Coole, Elisabeth Ellis, and Kennan Ferguson, Associate Editors (John Wiley and Sons, 2015 [September 2014]). Eight volumes; 4360 pages; in print and online.
• Kant’s Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). Edited and with an introduction and bibliography by Elisabeth Ellis. Paperback edition, 2015.
• "The Received Hobbes," essay in a new edition of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ian Shapiro, ed. (Yale University Press, 2010); pp. 481-518.
• "Difficult Discoveries: Rousseauian Investigations of Love and Democracy," review essay in Political Theory 38, no. 5 (October 2010): 723-730.
• Provisional Politics: Kantian Arguments in Policy Context (Yale University Press, 2008).
• "Citizenship and Property Rights: A New Look at Social Contract Theory," Journal of Politics 68 (3): 544-555 (August 2006).
• Kant’s Politics: Provisional Theory for an Uncertain World (Yale University Press, 2005). Foundations of Political Theory, First-Book Prize (2007).
• "Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)," in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Michael T. Gibbons, ed., (John Wiley and Sons, 2015): 1983-1994. Published online September 2014: DOI: 10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0555.
• "Shapiro, Ian (1956--)," in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Michael T. Gibbons, ed., (John Wiley and Sons, 2015): 3427–3434. Published online September 2014: DOI: 10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0934. Written with David Switzer (graduate student, Texas A&M University).
• "Social Contract," in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Michael T. Gibbons, ed., (John Wiley and Sons, 2015): 3490–3493. Published online September 2014: DOI: 10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0949.
• "Kant," Encyclopedia of Political Theory, Mark Bevir, ed. (Sage, 2010): vol. 2, pp. 751-755.
• "Julien Offray de la Mettrie," in the Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers, Manfred Kuehn and Heinner Klemme, eds. (Thoemmes Press, 2010): vol. 2, pp. 697-690.
• "Ewald Friedrich, Baron von Hertzberg," in the Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers, Manfred Kuehn and Heinner Klemme, eds. (Thoemmes Press, 2010): vol. 2, pp. 498-499.
• "Joseph Niklas, Imperial Count of Windischgrätz," in the Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers, Manfred Kuehn and Heinner Klemme, eds. (Thoemmes Press, 2010): vol. 3, pp.1280-1281.
• "Provisionalism in the Study of Politics," in Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2004), edited by Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek E. Masoud: 350-377.
• "Common Sense," in the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, et al. (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004): 381-383.
• "Modernity," in the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, et al. (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004): 1473-1475.
• "Immanuel Kant’s Two Theories of Civil Society," in Frank Trentmann, ed., Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History (Providence: Berghahn Books, 2000; second edition, 2004): pp. 105-134.

Teaching and supervision

Courses regularly taught at Otago

• ECOL 212 Ecological Applications
• HUMS 301 PPE Internship Practicum
• PHIL 103 Ethical Issues
• PHIL 235 Environmental Philosophy
• PHPE 201 Political Economy 1
• PHPE 301 Research Essay
• POLS 101 Political Philosophy
• POLS 307 Nature, Conflict, and the State

Supervision

• Anthony Gambrell (PhD, individual consent and political legitimacy)
• Britta Clark (MA, intergenerational justice and legal personhood)
• Bridie Lonie (PhD, Conceptual Art of Climate Change)
• Elizabeth Simmons (MA, Water and Sustainable Practice in New Zealand Vineyards)