Davide Pala, PhD

Vita

Davide Pala is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Theory at the University of Eastern Piedmont. He has many interests in Political Philosophy and Ethics, but most of his research employs a republican approach to political morality and concentrates on matters of international morality, with a focus on human rights. The ultimate aim of his research is to further expand the republican agenda of research in this area, as well as in other areas little explored so far.

He received his Ph.D in Politics from the University of Manchester in March 2023. In his Ph.D dissertation, entitled “A Republican Approach to Human Rights”, he has provided the first, reasonably comprehensive, inquiry into human rights from a republican perspective. He has laid the foundations of this approach; spelled out the content of some human rights particularly relevant to republican freedom; and investigated what international human-rights regime is needed to realise human rights so conceived of.

Subsequently, he has been applying this approach to republicanism to questions overlooked in the republican literature. First, he has delved into debates on intergenerational justice, and investigated whether current generations can dominate future generations, and if so, what this means, exactly, and what should be done to reduce this threat. Second, he has addressed questions of animal ethics, and more specifically, investigated humans’ domination over domesticated animals, and suggested how to overcome it.

Research at the ZEPP

He is currently a Visiting Postdoc fellow at LMU, developing a new research project which builds on his previous work on human rights and republicanism, and addresses the question of refugees’ resistance to domination and human-rights violations while displaced and during their perilous journeys to the West.