About

I am Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.

My primary research areas are digital ethics and ethics of defence technologies, with a particular focus on the ethical, legal, social and governance implications of using digital technologies for national defence and security purposes.

My research focuses on the definition of ethical principles for the use of AI in defence and of a methodology to guide their application to specific cases and on the moral permissibility of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) including the definition of autonomous weapon systems , the attribution of moral responsibility for their actions , the application of jus ad bellum to AWS, and the application of the principles of distinction, necessity, and the doctrine of double effect to assess the permissibility of their use. This work has been also published in ‘The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Defence‘, Oxford University Press.

Prior to joining the Oxford Internet Institute, I was Research Fellow in Cyber Security and Ethics – Politics & International Studies – University of Warwick. Prior my work at the University of Warwick, I held a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Hertfordshire working on Information Warfare and its ethical implications. I obtained a PhD (Doctor Europeus) in Philosophy at the University of Padua. My PhD thesis focused on the epistemic and ethical implications of the occurrences of e-Trust in distributed systems. I graduated in Philosophy at the University of Bari with a MA thesis on the Symbol Grounding Problem.

Service to The Profession and Board Membership

• Member of the Ethics Advisory Committee to the UK Ministry of Defence
• Editor-in-chief of Minds & Machines (SpringerNature)
• Editor-in-chief of Philosophical Studies Series (SpringerNature)

Past Positions and Associations

• Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
• Research Fellow in Cyber Security and Ethics Politics & International Studies, University of Warwick.
• Marie Curie Fellow Philosophy, School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.
• Senior Research Associate  Information Ethics Group (IEG), University of Oxford.
• Research Associate Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics , University of Oxford.
• Executive editor of  Philosophy & Technology (SpringerNature)
• Fellow of the World Economic Forum’ Council for the Future of Cybersecurity
• President of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (2013-2016).

Some of my talks are available here

My Google Scholar profile is here

My LinkedIn profile is here