Staff profile

My research centres on questions of social injustice and political action.  I have published on workers’ rights, global injustice, extreme poverty, aggregative harm and the duties of individuals in a ‘tragedy of the commons’ scenario.

I am interested on participatory and engaged methods in political philosophy and my current research project explores questions of activist legitimacy.

'Legitimacy for Activists' identifies and addresses the moral dilemmas faced by political activists acting outside of official challenges for participation in seeking to address injustice. I theorise such activists as agents of justice and explore the legitimacy standards they can be asked to meet. To do so, I engage with activists to establish the dilemmas they face in their work and the way they understand and resolve them.

I am currently writing about the advantages of engaged methodologies in applied philosophy, examining epistemic reasons for including dialogues with stakeholders in the discovery stage of research.

In 2014 I joined Durham's School of Government and International Affairs as a lecturer (an open ended research and teaching position). In 2021 I was promoted to Associate Professor. I am director of Durham's Centre for Political Thought, an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Advance Study and a fellow of the Global Policy Institute. I am a member of the Economics and Ethics Network and am on the Editorial Board of the Journal Of Social Philosophy.

Before taking up my post at Durham I was a postdoctoral fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt part of the Justitia Amplificata centre for advanced studies led by Professors Rainer Forst (Goethe University) and Stefan Gosepath (Free University, Berlin).My PhD is from the University of York and was supervised by Professors Matt Matravers and Martin O'Neill. It concerned individual duties to politically organise in reponse to global poverty. I did my first two degrees in the philosophy department at the University of Glasgow, where I worked with Professor Dudley Knowles on my MLitt dissertation which looked at theory of legitimacy and political obligation.

I teach the level 3 module Social and Political Philosophy (Transnational Injustice and the Ethics of Activism), and Researching Political Theory (Level 4).

• Political Legitimacy
• Protest Ethics
• Civil Resistance
• Collectivization Duties
• Global Justice
• Human Rights
• The Political Philosophy of Iris Marion Young
• Labour Injustice
• Moral Contractualism
• Social Justice

• 2000: Fellowship:

  Visiting Fellowship, Justitia Amplificata, Goethe University, Frankfurt.

• 2000: Teaching Award: ‘Outstanding Academic Support in Social Science and Health’ Durham Students’ Union Annual Awards.
• 2000: Conference Funding: Society of Applied Philosophy Event Funding for Workshop 'Labour Market Injustice' (£2000) with Tom Parr and Andrew Walton.

Authored book

• Introducing Political Philosophy
  
  Walton, A., Abel, W., Kahn, E., & Parr, T. (2021). Introducing Political Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

Book review

• Global Poverty, Injustice and Resistance, Gwilym David Blunt (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2020) 290 pp., cloth £69.99, eBook $80
  
  Kahn, E. (2020). Global Poverty, Injustice and Resistance, Gwilym David Blunt (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2020) 290 pp., cloth £69.99, eBook $80. Ethics and International Affairs, 34(3), 415-418. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0892679420000428

Chapter in book

• Poverty, Injustice and Obligations to take Political Action
  
  Kahn, E. (2016). Poverty, Injustice and Obligations to take Political Action. In H. P. Gaisbauer, G. Schweiger, & C. Sedmak (Eds.), Ethical issues in poverty alleviation. (pp. 209-224). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41430-0_12

Journal Article

• Essentially Aggregative Harm, Restraint, and Collectivization
  
  Kahn, E. (2024). Essentially Aggregative Harm, Restraint, and Collectivization. Political Theory, 52(1), 34-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231185187
• Beyond Claim‐Rights: Social Structure, Collectivization, and Human Rights
  
  Kahn, E. (2021). Beyond Claim‐Rights: Social Structure, Collectivization, and Human Rights. Journal of Social Philosophy, 52(2), 162-184. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12362
• Injustice and collectivization in world politics
  
  Kahn, E. (2019). Injustice and collectivization in world politics. Global Justice (Downer, A.C.T.), 11(2), 29-50. https://doi.org/10.21248/gjn.11.02.217
• A structural approach to the human right to just and favourable working conditions
  
  Kahn, E. (2019). A structural approach to the human right to just and favourable working conditions. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22(7), 863-883. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2018.1448152
• The Tragedy of the Commons as an Essentially Aggregative Harm
  
  Kahn, E. (2014). The Tragedy of the Commons as an Essentially Aggregative Harm. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31(3), 223-236. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12057
• Global Economic Justice: A Structural Approach
  
  Kahn, E. (2012). Global Economic Justice: A Structural Approach. Public Reason Journal of Political and Moral Philosophy., 4(1-2), 48-67.