My main research is in ethics and social & political philosophy.

In political philosophy I am primarily interested in territorial rights (what justifies territorial claims; how can territorial disputes be justly resolved) and the mess of issues that impinge upon it -- global justice, nationalism, self-determination, indigenous rights, environmental ethics, property rights, etc.

In ethics I am concerned with a problem I call the political theory of individual responsibility. How should we assess individual behavior in institutional contexts, where we might be involved in many acts that we do not carry out with our own two hands, or where we might carry out acts with our own two hands that are, in some sense, not (merely) our own acts.

Here is a list of publications:

Land, Conflict, and Justice: a Political Theory of Territory (Cambridge UP, 2009).

I have also published the following articles:

• The Lockean Efficiency Argument and Aboriginal Land Rights," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 #3 (2000), 391-404.
• "Ethical Investing: The Permissibility of Participation," Journal of Political Philosophy 9 #4 (2001), 435-52.
• "Are You My Mommy?: On the Genetic Basis of Parenthood," with Tim Bayne. Journal of Applied Philosophy 18 #3 (2001), 273-85.
• "The Territorial State in Cosmopolitan Justice," Social Theory and Practice 28 #1 (2002), 29-50.
• "Parenthood and Procreation," with Tim Bayne. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  
• "Toward a Pluralist Account of Parenthood," with Tim Bayne. Bioethics 17 #3 (2003), 221-242.
• "Cloning and Genetic Parenthood," Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 12 #4 (Fall 2003), 401-410.
• "Valuing Land and Distributing Territory," in Geographies and Moralities, ed. Roger Lee and David M. Smith (Blackwell, 2004), pp. 135-48.
• "Self-determination in a Cosmopolitan World," in Putting Peace into Practice, ed. Nancy Potter (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 95-112.
• "Justice and the Politics of Deference," Journal of Political Philosophy 13 #2 (June 2005), pp. 153-73.
• "Who Killed Medgar Evers?" in Bob Dylan and Philosophy, ed. Peter Vernezze and Carl Porter (Open Court Pop Culture and Philosophy series, 2005), chapter 3.
• "Subsidiarity, Secession, and Cosmopolitan Democracy," Social Theory and Practice 32 #4 (October 2006).