About
Lauren Freeman is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Louisville and Director of the M.A. in Applied Philosophy. She conducts impact driven, interdisciplinary research that aims to understand how members of marginalized groups are oppressed in both obvious and subtle ways within the context of science, medicine, health, and healthcare. She is known for pushing bioethical and medical research to include patient groups who have traditionally been excluded from discussions, specifically, patients who are marginalized on the basis of sex, gender, race, body size, and disability. Her research has been featured in Nature; chosen as the feature article in prestigious health sciences, philosophy, and policy journals; and has gotten media attention (for example, here, here, here and here).
Lauren has been invited to lecture on health equity and health justice at medical and nursing schools across North America. She has also given workshops to healthcare, legal, healthcare risk management, and medical audit organizations across the United States, Canada, and in the United Kingdom on how to implement more just, compassionate, equitable healthcare to members of marginalized groups.
Lauren has collaborated with University of Louisville's School of Medicine eQuality Project (the first national pilot project to include LGBTQ+ content into medical school curriculum), the LGBTQ+ Center, and UofL's Center for Mental Health Disparities. She has received grants from University of Louisville's Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research (2017-2019), Norton Healthcare Petersdorf Foundation (2023-2026), in addition to many university research fellowships.
Her book, Microaggressions in Medicine (with Heather Stewart) was published with Oxford University Press in 2024. She is the co-editor of Microaggressions and Philosophy (Routledge, 2020) and was editor of The American Philosophical Association's journal Studies on Feminism and Philosophy (2019-2022).
She is a member of the World Congress on Thyroid Cancer DEI Committee and serves on the advisory board for the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research and Philosophy of Medicine journal.
Lauren is passionate about mentoring undergraduate and graduate students who are members of underrepresented groups as well as junior philosophy faculty. She also loves doing philosophy with children.