Professor Sorell studied at McGill University as an undergraduate and received both the BPhil and the DPhil at Oxford, where he was a Canada Council, Quebec Government and Graduate Scholar at Balliol. He has taught at Oxford, Essex and the Open University. In 1996-97 he was Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University.

• Global Ethics I
• Human Rights 1
• Human Rights 2
• Ethics and Finance

I supervise Global Ethics MSc dissertations and have around 5 PhD students at any one time.

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Research projects

• DETECTER
• AHRC Research Network in Microfinance
• Decent Work

Research interests

• Hobbes and Descartes – work on all aspects of each philosopher, but especially their metaphysics and theories of science
• Epistemology and philosophy of science – externalism and internalism; causal theories; scientism in philosophy; scientism
• Moral theory and applied ethics - responses to scepticism about moral theory; contractualism; relation of philosophy to public policy; capital punishment; ethics and business; ethics and counter-terrorism; ethics and robotics

He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the British Philosophical Association and has served for a long time on the Executive Committee of the Society for Applied Philosophy. He is on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Applied Philosophy; British Journal for the History of Philosophy; Business Ethics; a European Review; the RUSI Journal; Ibero-American Journal of Development Studies. Management Board of COST Action in Human Rights; member of expert group attached to the mandate of UN Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights.

Books

• and Jill Kraye and John Rogers,eds. Insiders and Outsiders in Early Modern Philosophy (Routledge, 2009)
• and Jill Kraye and John Rogers, Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy (Springer, 2009)
• Descartes Reinvented. Cambridge. 2005.
• and John Rogers, eds. Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy. Oxford. 2005
• and L. Foisneau, eds. Leviathan After 350 Years. Oxford. 2004.
• and John Rogers, eds. Hobbes and History. Routledge. 2000.

Contributions to books

• ‘Hobbes, Locke and the State of Nature’ in S Hutton and P Schurmann, eds., Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries and Legacy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008) pp. 27-44
• ‘Spinoza’s Unstable Politics of Freedom’ in. C. Hueneman, ed. Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) pp. 147-165.
• ‘Thomas Hobbes’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008
• ‘Project Finance and the Special Responsibilities of Multinationals’ in M. Salmon et al. eds Shared Responsibilities: Human Rights and Development in the 21st Century (Interscientia, 2007), pp. 265-282
• ‘Public Health, Parental Choice and Expert Knowledge:  the strange case of the MMR vaccine’ in  M Vereweij and A Dawsion, eds., Ethics, Prevention, and Public Health (Oxford, 2007), pp. 95-110.
• ‘Surgery, Accountability and ‘Choice’’   in Informed Consent and Clinician Accountability  eds. Stephen Clarke and J. Oakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) pp. 52-64.
• ‘Ethics and Work in Emergencies: the UK Firefighters Strike 2002-3’ in A Pinnington, R Macklin, T. Campbell eds. Human Resource Management: Ethics and Employment. (Oxford, 2007) pp. 209-220
• ‘Disability without Denial’ in A Dawson, H Draper, J Macmillan et al Principles of Health Care Ethics (Wiley, 2007) pp. 415-420.
• ‘Hobbes’s Moral Philosophy’ in P. Springborg, ed. Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 128-55.
• ‘The UN Norms for Transnational Corporations’ in A. Fagan and J. Dine eds. Capitalism and Human Rights (London: Edward Elgar, 2006), pp. 284-299.
• ‘Nuanced Justice’ in D. Conway, ed. Simple Justice (London: Civitas, 2005) pp. 64-76.
• ‘On Saying ‘No’ to History of Philosophy’ in T. Sorell and John Rogers eds, Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy (2005) pp. 46-30.
• ‘Schmitt’s unHobbesian Theory of Emergency’ in L. Foisneau, J-C Merle and Tom Sorell, eds. Hobbes and 20th Century Political Philosophy (Berlin: Perterlang, 2004)
• ‘Business and Human Rights’ in Tom Campbell and Seamus Miller,. eds. Human Rights and the Moral Responsibilities of Corporate and Public Sector Organizations (Kluwer, 2004), pp. 129-143.
• The Burdensome Freedom of Sovereigns’ in T. Sorell and L Foisneau, eds. Leviathan After 350 Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 183-196.
• ‘Health Care Provision and Public Morality’ in A Oliver, ed. Equity in Health and Health Care London: Nuffield Trust, 2003 pp. 10-18.
• ‘Hobbes’ in S. Nadler, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) 320-337.
• ‘Insurance Markets and Discrimination’ in J Harris and J Burley eds. Blackwell Companion to Genethics. Blackwell. 2001, pp. 398-407.
• ‘Pertinence et limites de la caricature dans l’histoire de la philosophie’ in Y.C. Zarka, ed. Comment ecrire l’histoire de la philosophie?’ Paris: P.U.F. 2001. pp. 113-130.

Articles

• Special Protections for Rescuers and Helpers’ Criminal Law and Philosophy 1 (2007) pp. 215-222.
• with Todd Landman ‘Justifying Human Rights: the role of Audience, Domain and Constituency’ Journal of Human Rights 5 (2006) pp. 383-400.
• ‘Hobbes on Trade, Consumption, and International Order’ The Monist 89 (2006) pp. 245-258.
• ‘Hobbes’s Uses of the State of Nature’ Etudes Philosophiques..
• Schmitt, Hobbes, and the Politics of Emergency’ Filozofski Vestnik 26  (2003) pp. 223-242 ISSN 0353-4510
• ‘The Normative and the Explanatory in Hobbes’s Political Science’ Revista di Storia della Filosofia 2004 pp. 205-217
• ‘Two Ideals and the Death Penalty’ Criminal Justice Ethics vol. 21. no. 2 .2002 27-34; reprinted in N. Rosenstand, ed. The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005).
• ‘Morality and Emergency’ Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, vol. 103, 2002 pp. 21-37
• and H. Draper, ‘Patient Responsibilities in Medical Ethics’ Bioethics vol. 16, no. 4, 2002 pp. 307-334
• ‘Hobbes and the Morality beyond Justice’  Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001) 227-242.
• ‘Hobbes Overcontextualised?’  The Seventeenth Century  16 (2001) pp. 123-146.
• ‘Cartesian Method and the Self’ Philosophical Investigations 24 (2001) pp. 55-74
• ‘Bodies and the Subjects of  Metaphysics and Ethics in Descartes’ Revistia di Storia della Filosofia  3 (2000) pp. 369-379.
• ‘Descartes, the Divine Will and the Ideal of Psychological Stability’ History of Philosophy Quarterly  17 (2000) pp. 361-379. Reprinted in G.Canziani,M.Granada and Y-C Zarka, Potentia Dei—L'onnipotenza nel pensiero dei secoli XVI e XVII. Milan. Franco Angeli. 2000, pp. 369-385