Dr Fay Niker

Lecturer

Philosophy A94 Pathfoot Building

Dr Fay Niker

Contact details

About me

I joined Stirling's Philosophy department as a Lecturer in August 2019 to pursue my research and teaching interests in political philosophy and ethics.

Before taking up this role, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University for two years. I completed my PhD at the University of Warwick in 2017 (thesis title: "Living Well by Design: An Account of Permissible Public Nudging"), and was awarded my MPhil in political theory from the University of Oxford in 2013. I first studied philosophy and politics while doing my BA (Hons) at Trinity College Dublin.

My main research interests are in political philosophy and (practical) ethics, though increasingly these interests are moving me towards exploring topics in moral psychology and social epistemology too.

My work focuses primarily on the ethics of influence, broadly understood. Within this, I've been working on: the political morality of nudging (i.e., behavioural public policy); how we might accommodate social embeddedness into our understanding of autonomy and paternalism (including some work on trust); salience and attention, and the ways in which these can be adjusted or curated for the purposes of epistemic and/or ethical ends; and the ethics and politics of “caring technologies”.

Given the close relationship between my philosophical topics and public policy, I'm keen to be involved in projects that reach beyond the academy.

I am a member of the Neuroethics Collective (based out of the University of British Columbia) and the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs (CEPPA, University of St Andrew's). I also co-edit a collaborative blog, Justice Everywhere, about philosophy in public affairs (http://justice-everywhere.org/).

Community Contribution

Trustee of the Pregnancy and Parents Centre, Edinburgh
https://www.pregnancyandparents.org.uk/trustees
I joined the Board of Trustees of the Pregnancy and Parents Centre (PPC) in Edinburgh in 2024. The PPC is a charitable organization supporting women and their families during pregnancy and early parenthood.

Professional membership

Elected to the Council of The Royal Institute of Philosophy
https://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/about-1/people/

Member of the Centre of Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs (CEPPA)
University of St Andrews
https://ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/people/members-of-ceppa/

Member of The Neuroethics Collective
University of British Columbia
https://www.peterbartreiner.com/…-collective.html

Professional qualification

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)
Higher Education Academy

University Contribution

Co-Lead of the IAS "Accessible Environments" Research Cluster
I am a Co-Lead for the successful IAS cluster Accessible Environments, together with Magdalena Ietswaart (Lead) and Arran Reader. We are the only cluster to have been successful in both rounds of IAS funding, meaning that we now have six PhD students in our research cluster, each being supervised by an interdisciplinary, cross-Faculty team of supervisors. I am supervising two of these projects.

Research themes