Dr Eilidh Beaton

Biography

I joined Aberdeen as a Lecturer in Philosophy in 2023. Before this, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Perry World House, a Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at the LSE, and a Lecturer in Political Economy Education at King's College London. I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Kok-Chor Tan.

I specialise in political philosophy, particularly global justice and the philosophy of migration. Most of my recent publications concern the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons. More information can be found on my research page, my publications page, and on my personal website.

Here at Aberdeen I teach undergraduate courses in political and moral philosophy. I also supervise (and am open to supervising) PhD projects in political philosophy. Information about my past teaching experience can be found here. Information about conducting doctoral research in philosophy at Aberdeen can be found here.

Research Overview

I specialise in global justice, particularly the political philosophy of migration. My research has been published in Law and Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, Philosophy and Public Issues, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.

My published work thus far has focused on the rights of refugees and displaced people.

I have argued at length that more people should be entitled to refugee status under international law. Specifically, I have defended a revised definition of refugeehood which is distinctive because it eradicates the alienage condition—the requirement that a person must have left their country of nationality or habitual residence in order to be eligible for refugee status. Rejecting alienage, I argue, has implications for how the widely-criticised persecution condition should be amended. Additionally, I claim that modifying the definition of refugeehood could improve the protection of Internally Displaced Persons.

I have also written about refugee rights to family reunion. My paper on this topic extends the existing literature on immigrant family reunion to refugees, arguing that refugees should have stronger, broader, less-conditional rights to family reunion, particularly when they are children. This piece was inspired by some research I co-authored many years ago while interning at Oxfam GB. 

In addition to this work on refugees and displaced people, I have also written about the rights of long-settled undocumented immigrants, vaccine nationalism, and special obligations to co-nationals.

My current research projects concern (i) sanctuary, and (ii) nation-state centrism in political philosophy.

Non-course Teaching Responsibilities

PhD Dissertation Supervision

• 2024-Present: Jordi Vilahur, "Philosophy of Education for Schooling: Political Values and the Relevance of Philosophy". Co-supervised with Daniel Pedersen (Divinity).

MLitt by Research Supervision

• 2024-2025: Yubin Zhang, project title TBD.