We’re pleased to welcome Professor Alex Voorhoeve as our new Head of Department.

After three years as our Head of Department, Professor Jason McKenzie Alexander will be stepping down this year to be replaced by Professor Alex Voorhoeve. Although we’re sorry to see Jason go, we’re also exited to welcome Alex as the new head of LSE Philosophy!

Professor Alex Voorhoeve joined the Department in 2004. He studied economics and philosophy at Erasmus University, Cambridge University, and UCL and has held visiting positions at Harvard (2008-09), Princeton (2012-13) and the National Institutes of Health, U.S. (2016-17). During his time in the Department, Alex has taught on many of our core courses on moral and political philosophy, philosophy of economics and philosophy and public policy and was responsible for developing three of our degrees: the MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy, the BSc in Politics and Philosophy and the BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Alex specialises in the theory and practice of distributive justice (especially as it relates to health), in rational choice theory and in moral psychology. His work regularly appears in some of the world’s top philosophy journals and his popular philosophy book, Conversations on Ethics, was published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. Alex served on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage from 2012 to 2014, and his arguments for a pluralist egalitarian view of distributive justice helped shape their landmark report, Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage. You can learn more about Alex’s work on distributive justice and Universal Health Coverage in this video.

More recently, Alex’s work has focussed on policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, on priority setting principles in health economics and on the nature of moral judgments.

After having spent part of last year on parental leave we’re very pleased to welcome Alex back to LSE Philosophy as our new Head of Department!