Williams, Andrew
ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).
Humanities
Short biography
Andrew Williams read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford and was a graduate student at Nuffield College, Oxford and Harvard University. He then became a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and later taught at York, Reading and Warwick, where he was a Professor of Philosophy before joining ICREA in October 2009. He has also been a visiting professor in the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University and the Department of Philosophy at Harvard, and a Faculty Fellow in Ethics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His work has been published in such journals as Ethics, Economics and Philosophy, Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy & Public Affairs, and Utilitas, and he is Editor of Politics, Philosophy & Economics.
Research interests
My interests lie in moral and political philosophy and practical rationality, as well as intersecting areas in economics and political science. My research focuses in particular on questions about distributive justice, including ones arising across states and generations. I explore how egalitarian distributive principles should guide the design of social institutions that shape the prospects of children, parents, the elderly, and future generations. My most recent work examines how policy makers should deal with gender wage gaps and lifespan variations as well as the role that demographic factors should play in our response to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.