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Director, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Programme

Contact details

2C14, second floor, central corridor, Burns Building, 95 Albany Street
Tel +64 3 479 8727
Email lisa.ellis@otago.ac.nz
academia.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Academic qualifications

1999: PhD Berkeley
1992: MA Berkeley
1990: BA Princeton

Research interests

Lisa Ellis is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics programme. Her current project, “the politics of planetary boundaries,” investigates how we can make environmental policy decisions that serve our interests in flourishing now and in the future. Ellis has also written about the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant, social contract theory, Thomas Hobbes’s political theory, just transitions, climate adaptation, biodiversity management, the collective ethics of flying, and many other topics.

Her work has been supported by the Australian Research Council, Aotearoa New Zealand’s Deep South and Biodiversity Heritage National Science Challenges, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Find out more about the Philosophy, Politics and Economics programme

Read about Lisa’s recent work:

Hear about Lisa’s recent work:

Publications

Current projects

  • "The Ethics of Net Zero," ARC project with Garrett Cullity, Christian Barry, Catriona McKinnon, and Stephen Gardiner; 2023-2026
  • "Climate Reporting Effectiveness," XRB project with Sebastian Gehricke, Sara Walton, and Renzhu Zhang, 2023-2025
  • "A Just Transitions Guide for Aotearoa New Zealand," MBIE project with Catherine Leining, et al., 2022-2023
  • "On All Fronts: Overcoming Barriers to Change in the Aviation Sector (and beyond)' with James Higham and James Maclaurin
  • “The Politics of Planetary Boundaries,” book project on the collective implications of discrete decisions in environmental politics

Recent publications

  • “A Social Contract Case for a Carbon Tax: Ending Aviation Exceptionalism” (2024). Revista de Ciencia Politica (online first). Also published as, “Un caso de contrato social para un impuesto al carbono: Poniendo fin al excepcionalismo de la aviación.” https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-090x2024005000113
  • An East-West Dialogue on Good Governance: Learning from Each Other, edited by Ruiping Fan and Sungmoon Kim (Springer, 2024). Contributing author to chapters 2-5 (with Daniel A. Bell, Edmund Cheng, Chunyan Ding, Elisabeth Ellis, Ruiping Fan, Alfred Ho, Sungmoon Kim, Qing Liu, Haig Patapan, Mathias Risse, Robert Sparrow, Siu Fu Tang, Julia Tao, Ellen Zhang). Author, chapter 9, “Notes on What I Learned.”
  • “Jeffrey Church’s American Kant,” review essay in The Political Science Reviewer 47, no. 2 (2023). https://politicalsciencereviewer.wisc.edu/index.php/psr/article/view/834/979
  • Allen, Will, Troy Baisden, Jonathan Burgess, Sophie Crawford, Lisa Ellis, David Hall, Trish Hall, Ushana Jayasuriya, Merata Kawharu, Hannah Kotula, Catherine Leining, Sasha Maher, Oscar Montes de Oca, Ana Pueyo, Janet Stephenson, Sara Walton and Krushil Watene. 2023. “A Guide to Just Transitions for Communities in Aotearoa New Zealand,” Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, Wellington. ISBN number (online) 978-1-991092-52-6. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/economic-development/just-transition/just-transitions-guide
  • Review of Jeffrey Church, Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life, in Perspectives on Politics (2024)
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592724000082.
  • “Theorising Environmental Politics,” in Environmental Politics in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland
    University Press, 2022), edited by Julie MacArthur and Maria Bargh: 62-74; ISBN 978 1 77671 092 8
  • “Sectoral Responsibility for Climate Change: Is Aviation Exceptionalism Defensible?. In Climate Justice and Non-state Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals (Routledge, 2020), edited by Jeremy Moss and Lachlan Umbers, chapter 4. ISBN 9780367368920
  • "Democracy as Constraint and Possibility for Environmental Action," in The OxfordHandbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2016), edited by Teena Gabrielson,  Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg: pp. 505-519;
    https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199685271.001.0001
  • Dreyer, Will, and Elisabeth Ellis (2022). “Do New Zealand Select Committees still make a difference? The case of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill 2019”, Political Science. DOI: 10.1080/00323187.2021.2019591
  • “Just transition to climate resilient coastal communities in Aotearoa New Zealand” (2021). Policy
    Quarterly     17 (3): 23-30. https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/issue/view/798
  • Benjamin Dudley Tombs, Ben France-Hudson, Janet Stephenson, and Elisabeth Ellis, “Property Purgatory”  (2021). Policy Quarterly Vol 17 Issue 1, February 2021; pp. 50-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26686/pq.v17i1.6730
  • “Public Property, Collective Integrity, and Environmental Justice” (2020). Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2020.1744077.
  • Higham, J.E.S., Ellis, E. & Maclaurin, J. (2018). “Tourist aviation emissions: A problem of collective action.” Journal of Travel Research (published online May 2018 in the JTR and the Foundations series). doi/10.1177/0047287518769764.
  • “Introduction” to special issue on “Political Philosophy and What the People Think, by Avner de Shalit,” 2021. Australasian Philosophical Review 4.4. DOI: 10.1080/24740500.2021.1876410
  • Bioethics panel [Parke, E., Russell, R., Armstrong, D., Ellis, E., Hohneck, M., Iorns, C., Knight, J., Litten, K., MacDonald, E., Maclaurin, J., Speedy, C., Steeves, T., Watane, K., Wehi, P.] (2019). “Predator Free New Zealand: Social, Cultural, and Ethical Challenges.” BioHeritage Challenge. 26 pp. https://bioheritage.nz/outputs/predator-free-new-zealand-social-cultural-and-ethical-challenges/
  • “How Should the Risks of Sea-Level Rise be Shared?” Working paper commissioned by the Deep South
    National Science Challenge. Submitted August 2018; published December 2018. 20,677 words.
    https://www.deepsouthchallenge.co.nz/sites/default/files/2018-11/How%20should%20risks%20of%20SLR%20be%20shared%20Lisa%20Ellis%20Final%20Report.pdf

Teaching and supervision

Courses regularly taught at Otago

Supervision

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