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
  • “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, forthcoming
  • “The Irrelevance of Data to the Ethics of Infant Intersex Surgery,” (with Elizabeth Reis), Journal of Pediatric Ethics, forthcoming
  • “Is Female Genital ‘Mutilation’ Good for One’s Health? On Western Bias in Moral Evaluations of Female Versus Intersex Child Genital Cutting Practices,” (with Brian Earp (first author), Arianne Shahvisi, and Elizabeth Reis), Nursing Ethics, forthcoming
  • “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