Andrew Light Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs Department of Philosophy University of Washington 345 Savery, Box 353350 Seattle, WA 98195 Office: (206) 543-9888 Fax: (206) 685-8740 Email: alight@u.washington.edu

Andrew Light, Ph.D. (University of California, Riverside, 1996), is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs, and Adjunct Professor of Geography and Public Health Genetics, at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at Lancaster University (U.K.), a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, an Affiliate Faculty member of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College, New York, and a Studio Fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. His primary areas of interest are environmental ethics and policy, philosophy of technology, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics.

Light is the author of over seventy articles and book chapters on these topics, and is editor or co-editor of sixteen books, including The Aesthetics of Everyday Life(Columbia, 2005), Animal Pragmatism: Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Relationships (Indiana, 2004), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT, 2003), Environmental Ethics: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2003), Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Deep Ecology (MIT, 2000), Technology and the Good Life? (Chicago, 2000), Philosophies of Place (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), Social Ecology After Bookchin (Guilford, 1998) and Environmental Pragmatism (Routledge, 1996). He is also the author of a new book on philosophy and film, Reel Arguments: Film, Philosophy, and Social Criticism (Westview, 2003).

Most of Light's work in environmental philosophy has focused on the failure of the discipline to fulfill its promise as a guide to formulating better, more morally responsible environmental policies. Identifying several theoretical debates in the field which have prevented it from aiding in the development of better policies, Light argues that a pragmatist methodology is needed to transform environmental ethics into a more practical ethics, able to participate in the actual resolution of environmental problems. Consistent with this work, he has just finished a co-authored book, Environment and Values, with John O'Neill and Alan Holland (forthcoming, Routledge 2006), which offers a historical and community based approach to environmental valuation. He is currently completing a monograph on ethical issues in restoration ecology, tentatively titled Restoring the Culture of Nature. Funding for this project has been provided by an individual scholar award from the National Science Foundation and a Harrington Faculty Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin. Future research will focus on urban environmental issues.

In addition to these activities, Light works with many journals and professional societies. He serves on the editorial boards of Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, Ecological Restoration, and The Journal of Architectural Education. In 1994 he co-founded the Society for Philosophy and Geography with Jonathan Smith (Texas A&M University) and co-edits the journal, Ethics, Place, and Environment (Routledge), with Smith. The journal publishes interdisciplinary work on questions of space, place, and both urban and natural environments. He has also helped to organize fourteen international conferences on environmental issues in North America and Europe, and is the past President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.

Prior to coming to UW, Light was assistant professor of environmental philosophy (tenured 2005) at NYU, where he was also director of the Envrionmental Conservation Education program and the Applied Philosophy Group.

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Curriculum Vitae Available here in Acrobat .PDF format. You'll need the Adobe Acrobat Plugin which can be obtained for free by clicking here.

Or you can download the file in Microsoft Word format by clicking here.

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Forthcoming Papers
Available in both PDF and Word format. Click on the version you would like to view/download.

· "Faking Nature" Revisited (PDF | Word)

· Restorative Relationships (PDF | Word)

· Democratic Technology, Population, and Environmental Change (PDF | Word)

· Ecological Citizenship: The Democratic Promise of Restoration (PDF | Word)

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Recently Published Papers
Available in PDF format.

· Contemporary Environmental Ethics: From Metaethics to Public Philosophy (PDF)

· Urban Ecological Citizenship (PDF)

· What is a Pragmatic Philosophy? (PDF)

· Elegy for a Garden: Thoughts on an Urban Environmental Ethic

· Tolkien's Green Time: Environmental Themes in the Lord of the Rings

· Public Environmental Philosophy: An Interview with Andrew Light (PDF)

· Grist Magazine Interview with Andrew Light