Past Members - Lancaster University

Dr Rianna Price

EVPI Project Co-ordinator

My PhD research looked at the intersection of medical ethics, health policy, and the impact of heteronormative values on legislative practice for queer people in India. As such, I am interested in the intersections between health, ethics, and policy, and how these shape socio-cultural discourses of sexual orientation and gender identity. My research engages with the relationships between colonialism and health, as well as the impact of imperialism on understandings of race, gender, caste, and religion. The ethics, values, and policy initiative is an excellent way for me to move into more direct research on policy and policymaking.

Floris Bujard

Floris is a third year History and International Relations student. In her early years, she and her family travelled around the world a lot, living in London, Belgium, Singapore, and spent the remaining years of her life in Geneva, Switzerland.

During this time, she interned with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Communications department, collaborated with the Gift Box Project gathering necessities to donate to people in need, spoke in the UN and lead a guided tour for Ambassadors through the inspiring Anne Frank exhibit, aptly named "Let me be Myself." With this experience, she was lucky enough to be enlisted onto the EVPI (Ethics, Values, Policy Initiative) team, and aspires to be a valuable asset to the team with her experience and dedication to the values of the project. Questions of AI usage and other modern ethical issues like social media and online behaviour are what fascinate her the most, and she looks forward to exploring them through the EVPI initiative.

Aidan Clifford

Aidan is a fourth-year postgraduate student studying diplomacy and foreign policy. His main academic interests revolve around populism, and related to that, the politics and policies around immigration, digital spaces and multilateralism.

Aidan’s interest in EVPI stems from his fascination with the ways in which governments formulate policy. Ethics in this arena often comes secondary to electoral and business interests which take precedence in how governments decide on instigating policies. He also hopes that through being involved in EVPI he can help promote a different approach to policymaking that properly considers the ethics in the fields of his interests.

Aidan Clifford smiling. — Aidan Clifford

Ariana Dell

Ariana Dell is a second year Politics and International student studying at Lancaster University. Her interests lie in looking at the ethical implications of international policy, specifically humanitarian intervention and also with how we can sustainably achieve peace and equality globally.

Alongside her studies she is an intern for EVPI under the Richardson Institute Internship Program to further her experience by working with a centre for peace studies and practice practical research skills.

Hollie Meehan

Hollie is a third year philosophy student with particular interests in virtue ethics and the philosophy of mind. She is currently writing a dissertation on virtue ethics in AI, and whether putting virtue ethics into code that machines can understand compromises its values. She hopes to continue this by pursuing a career in academia after her master’s degree and PhD.

She applied for the internship to broaden her knowledge of practical ethics and look into applications of philosophy to current issues in policy. She has enjoyed modules this year in the philosophy of war and conflict, welfare, and twentieth-century philosophy, and hopes to continue these into her master’s year, which she is aiming to complete at Lancaster. During the internship, she has helped to coordinate the staff spotlights and seminar series and has written blog posts on current issues in AI ethics, including bias in ChatGPT and liability in self-driving cars.

Alexander Pyper

Alexander is a third year Politics student, alongside his role as Vice President of Take 2 cinema. Previously he had written his second year research paper as a discourse analysis on late 20th century Labour conference speeches, but is currently writing his dissertation as an institutional analysis on the US Supreme Court.

He has a particular interest in the charity sector, as he hopes to use the EVPI internship to discuss the complex relationship and divide between charities and government, and to then explore how the gap between the two can be bridged.

He is looking forward to being able to utilise his volunteering and society executive experience to co-ordinate events within the Richardson Institute to foster an open dialogue between academics, charities and the public.