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Faculty of Philosophy

 
Dr Clare Chambers has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for three years from October 2018 for a project titled Intact: The Political Philosophy of the Unmodified Body.  
 
Is there any value in having an unmodified body? What duties do we have to protect the ‘natural’ body? Western attitudes to body modification are deeply inconsistent. Some practices, such as female genital modification, are forbidden. Others, such as beauty regimes, are routine. And some, such as cosmetic surgery and sex reassignment, were recently rare but are increasingly accepted. In this context of normalised modification, the unmodified body becomes politically significant. This project will investigate the complex and politically fraught concept of the ‘natural’ body, and develop a normative theory of political, legal, and social protection of the unmodified body.