Jeffrey Howard is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy at University College London. He holds a DPhil from Oxford University and an AB from Harvard University. At UCL Jeff holds appointments in the Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy, and (by affiliation) Department of Philosophy. He is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, British Academy Rising Star, and BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He was the recipient of the 2021 Berger Memorial Prize from the American Philosophical Association. His work on freedom of expression, social media, democracy, social contract theory, crime and punishment, and counter-extremism has appeared in many journals including Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, British Journal of Political Science, and the Annual Review of Political Science. He is currently writing a book on free speech in the age of social media.

Jeff recently launched the UCL Online Speech Project, which produces empirically informed philosophical guidance on how to improve the digital public sphere. As part of this project, he is working on a range of normative questions concerning the ethics of content moderation, algorithmic amplification, and public discourse. His team of postdoctoral fellows synthesizes expertise in political and moral philosophy, the philosophy of language, law and regulation, and computational social science.

Jeff has taught a wide range of courses in political, legal, and moral philosophy, with an emphasis on ethics and public policy. He currently teaches the ethics component of the policy leadership training course for civil servants within HM Treasury. At UCL Jeff has twice won the departmental Prize for Outstanding Faculty Teaching, as well as a UCL Education Award for his educational leadership. At the University of Essex, where he previously taught, he won the Best Lecturer at the University Award, and the THINK course he created won The Guardian’s University Award for Student Experience.

Jeff is currently an Affiliated Faculty Fellow in the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, and he has previously been a visiting scholar in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University.