I am Assistant Professor at Albany Medical College in the Department of Bioethics Education and Research.

​From 2017-2019, I was a Hecht-Levi Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. In 2017, I completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where I wrote a dissertation under the direction of Susan Wolf. I did my undergraduate work at Cornell University, where I wrote an honors thesis supervised by Derk Pereboom.

My primary philosophical fields are normative ethics, moral psychology, and bioethics. I am interested in the ways in which social strength and weakness inform the way we feel and express moral emotions and shape our interpersonal relationships, including doctor-patient interactions. 

​You can email me at reisdes@amc.edu.

Publications
Ethics
  • “Rank Offence: The Ecological Theory of Resentment,” Mind, forthcoming
  • “Anger: Scary Good,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2019
  • “Responsibility and the Shallow Self,” Philosophical Studies, 2018
 
Applied Ethics
  • “Are Conscientious Objectors Morally Obligated to Refer?,” (with Abram Brummett), Journal of Medical Ethics, forthcoming
  • “Ethical Considerations in Vaccine Allocation,” (with Megan Applewhite), Immunological Investigations, forthcoming
  • “The Irrelevance of Data to the Ethics of Infant Intersex Surgery,” (with Elizabeth Reis), Journal of Pediatric Ethics, forthcoming
  • “Rationing Ventilators,” (with Megan Applewhite), in Difficult Decisions in Surgical Ethics, eds. Vassyl Lonchyna, Peggy Kelley, and Peter Angelos (Springer, forthcoming)
  • “Tolerance for Uncertainty and Professional Development: A Normative Analysis,” (with Martha Gerrity and Gail Geller), Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2021
  • “The Need for a Unified Ethical Stance on Child Genital Cutting,” (with Brian Earp (first author), Arianne Shahvisi, and Elizabeth Reis), Nursing Ethics, 2021
  • “Understanding Autonomy: An Urgent Intervention,” Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2020
  •  “Rehabilitating Blame,” in Ethics and Error in Medicine, eds. Fritz Allhoff and Sandra Borden (Routledge, 2019)
  • ‘“What’s in a name?’: The University of Oregon, De-Naming Controversies, and the Ethics of Public Memory” (With Matthew Dennis), Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2019
  • “What ‘Just Culture’ Doesn’t Understand About Just Punishment,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 2018
  • “Gun Violence, Shame, and Social Change,” (With Nancy Berlinger), Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, 2018
  • “Freezing Eggs and Creating Patients: Moral Risks of Commercialized Fertility,” (with Elizabeth Reis), The Hastings Center Report, 2017
  • “Are Pediatricians to Blame for Unnecessary Genital Surgeries?” (with Elizabeth Reis), American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 2017 
 
Reviews
  • The Limits of Free Will by Paul Russell, Journal of Moral Philosophy, forthcoming
  • Rethinking Health Care Ethics by Stephen Scher and Kasia Kozlowska, Monash Bioethics Review, 2020