Professor Rowan Cruft

Professor

Philosophy University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Rowan Cruft

Contact details

About me

I am Head of the Division of Law and Philosophy. I joined Philosophy at Stirling in 2002 after completing my PhD - on the justification of property rights - at Cambridge. Before postgraduate research, I worked for a year on tax policy as a civil servant in HM Treasury. Please click on the 'Research' tab for details of recent publications and projects.

My research examines the nature and justification of rights and duties, and their role in shaping a democratic public sphere.  I am especially interested in the comparative importance of different forms of right including human rights, natural rights, contractual rights, property rights, legal rights.

My book - Human Rights, Ownership, and the Individual (OUP, 2019) - examines the distinction between rights grounded primarily by what they do for the right-holder (e.g. our 'basic' human rights) and those grounded by what they do for the wider community independently of their benefits to the right-holder (e.g. most property rights and other useful created systems of rights). I start from a new account of the nature of rights as formally bringing together duty-bearer and right-holder first-personally. Work on this book was supported by a British Academy mid-career fellowship (2016-17). The book is available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/human-rights-ownership-and-the-individual-9780198793366. It has been reviewed in the following journals: Ethics; American Journal of Jurisprudence; Law and Philosophy; Journal of Moral Philosophy. A symposium on the book is available in the Journal of Applied Philosophy: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14685930/2022/39/2. I discuss the book's doubts about property as a right in the Southampton Ethical Challenges Lecture 2022, here: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/southampton_ethics_centre/news/events/2022/11/14-ethical-challenges-lecture-is-property-a-right.page

I attempted a very condensed summary of some of my thinking on rights in this 'Time for Reflection' session at the Scottish Parliament in September 2024: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottishparliament.tv%2Fmeeting%2Ftime-for-reflection-september-17-2024&data=05%7C02%7Crowan.cruft%40stir.ac.uk%7C8a265ed142714c3fe0c808dcd73e649a%7C4e8d09f7cc794ccb9149a4238dd17422%7C0%7C0%7C638621910189065553%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=pebD8Qqey3zds5CjQaNLm7m%2F16yvIyx3sTwGFj%2FyfwI%3D&reserved=0

I am also co-editor of Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (OUP, 2015): http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199688630.do

I was recently Principal Investigator for a major project, Norms for the New Public Sphere, with Natalie Ashton (Stirling), Fabienne Peter (Warwick) and Jonathan Heawood (Senior Research Fellow), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)from 2019-22. The project brought together academic philosophers with those working in media studies and media activists and professionals, in order to investigate the opportunities and challenges that new social media pose for the 'public sphere'. The project team criticised and considered the norms that could underpin a media policy framework for the internet age. For full details about the project, see: https://newpublicsphere.stir.ac.uk/ Our reports for policy-makers and industry are here, along with a range of talks and articles: https://newpublicsphere.stir.ac.uk/outreach/ The AHRC has funded Follow-On work (2024-25) emerging from this project, supporting development of a Co-Creational Model for the News Media, building on an idea developed by Fabienne Peter and Jonathan Heawood that emerged from our initial project: https://www.publicinterestnews.org.uk/post/trust-truth-and-teamwork/

A guiding aim of my research is to demonstrate how philosophical positions bear on the justification of public policies and law.  I have participated in policy development for NGOs and government, and in public inquiries including in 2012 as an invited witness at the Leveson Inquiry (https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122192140/http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Witness-Statement-of-Dr-Rowan-Cruft.pdf) and as co-author of a submission to the Commission on a Bill of Rights for the UK. I was also recently a participant in an AHRC/MRC-funded interdisciplinary network working with health, law and media academics and professionals, examining the right to health in youth justice institutions in Brazil and Scotland. I was delighted to receive an award for 'Best Mentor' in Stirling's Research Culture Awards 2021.

Teaching: I teach undergraduate modules on a range of topics in moral, political and legal philosophy, and regularly teach on our joint graduate programme with St Andrews (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/sasp/). I also helped set up Stirling's interdisciplinary MSc in Human Rights and Diplomacy, taught in partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (https://www.stir.ac.uk/courses/pg-taught/human-rights-and-diplomacy/).

  Research Postgraduate Supervision: I am currently supervising PhDs on the need for work, on the nature of rights, on human rights and cultural heritage, and on trust and audit.  I have supervised PhD theses on the nature of 'positive' or socio-economic rights, on well-being as a ground for justice, on the justice of market transactions, on the defensibility of democracy, on the responsibility of collective agents, on causation in morality and law, and on civil disobedience.  I enjoy postgraduate supervision and my students have a strong record on the job market, and a strong record attracting AHRC and other awards. See https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/sasp/introduction/our-placement-record/  

Professional Activities: In addition to reviewing for journals, I was a member of the management committee of The Philosophical Quarterly from 2009-19.  From 2015-17 I was a member of the executive committee of the Aristotelian Society.  From 2007-14, I was a member of the AHRC peer review college. Since 2017 I have been a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. In 2021, I was appointed to the College of Experts for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/dcms-college-of-experts#contents. In addition, until recently I was external examiner for the undergraduate philosophy degree at King's College London, and have held similar roles at Cambridge and Glasgow.

Research programmes

Research themes