Professor Edward Harcourt

Professor Edward Harcourt

Professor Edward Harcourt, Director of the Institute for Ethics in AI (Interim), is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Keble College.

From 2018 to 2022 he was Director of Research, Strategy and Innovation at UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), where he helped to develop the Council’s flagship BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme,  played an early role in AHRC’s partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute, and gave evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life AI and Public Standards Report (2020).

His academic expertise lies at the boundary of ethics and the philosophy of mind, an intellectual foundation he brings to questions of AI governance and human agency. At the Institute for Ethics and AI, he is committed to building the Institute’s relationships not only within the university - with the Philosophy Faculty, with Computer Science, with the wider Humanities Division and beyond -  but also with government and private enterprise, so the Institute’s work both has a secure foundation in independent research and the real-world impact it deserves.

Career and education

Professor Harcourt read Philosophy and History at Trinity College, Cambridge, before proceeding to the BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy at Oxford. A Fellow of Keble since 2005, from 1993–1998 he was Domus Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and then Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent (1998–2005). He has been a Mind Association Research Fellow and has held visiting appointments at the University of California, Berkeley; Williams College (Massachusetts); and, as Wittgenstein Professor, at the University of Innsbruck. He has led collaborative research networks, including work at the interface of philosophy, psychiatry and mental health and served as Chair of the Board of the Faculty of Philosophy (2014–2018).  His wider interests include neo-Aristotelianism and child development, the philosophy of mental health and mental illness, and Wittgenstein.

In addition to his Oxford roles he is Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, a charity which aims to ‘educate the public in … philosophy’.

aiethicsadmin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Publications
Royal Institute of Philosophy