Dr. Isabel Canfield

Isabel Canfield’s research is largely in ethics and action theory. She is particularly interested in the applied ethical questions that arise in medicine and armed conflict.

Her research seeks to answer the question: How are we involved in and responsible for what we intend? She focuses on understanding shared and intended activity within the framework of normative ethics and action theory. She also grapples with applied ethical questions that arise in shared and intended activity. These two areas of her work inform each other. Her thinking about applied topics informs the work she does in action theory and normative ethics. At other times, her more theoretical work fosters novel approaches to very applied problems.

Before coming to the University of Richmond, Canfield was a postdoctoral ethics fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. In 2025, she completed her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. For more information on her scholarship and teaching, please see: https://www.isabelcanfield.com/