Heather Widdows


Heather Widdows is a British philosopher, specialising in applied ethics. She was at the University of Birmingham for 22 years, beginning as research fellow and finishing as Pro-Vice-Chancellor. She is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her research is in the areas of global ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of health and bioethics. In 2005, she was awarded a visiting fellowship at Harvard University.
Her most recent book, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, explores how the nature of the beauty ideal is changing - becoming more dominant, demanding and global than ever before. Widdows argues that to address the harms caused by the beauty ideal, we must first understand its ethical nature. Vogue described the book as "groundbreaking", and writer and journalist Bri Lee included Perfect Me in her article Books That Changed Me.
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Education and career

Widdows did her undergraduate degree Systematic Theology first class and PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD thesis in 1999 on "The relationship of morality and religion : an investigation of the issue in modern anglophone philosophy". She was supervised by Professor James P. Mackey and Ronald Hepburn. Following the completion of her PhD, spent a year as a post-doctoral research fellow at Imperial College London. She became part of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham as a research fellow in the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics in 2001. Widdows continued to work there until 2022, becoming a lecturer in 2003, senior lecturer in 2005, and professor of global ethics in 2009. She became the deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Impact in 2017, and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge transfer in 2021. In 2022 became a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
Widdows is currently the deputy chair of the REF2021 Philosophy sub-panel. Previously she was a member of the REF2014 Philosophy sub-panel.

Policy Work

Heather served as a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics from 2014 to 2020 and previously on the UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council from 2007 to 2013, and a member of Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Cosmetic Procedures from 2015 to 2016.
Heather's work on appearance-based discrimination, or lookism, was also cited in the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into 'Changing the perfect picture: an inquiry into body image'.

Research

She has published four sole-authored books: The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch ; Global Ethics: An Introduction ; The Connected Self: The Ethics and Governance of the Genetic Individual and most recently Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal.

Perfect Me

Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal was published in 2018. Widdows was supported in writing this book by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. In Perfect Me Widdows argues that beauty is functioning as ethical ideal, transforming our understandings of the world, our judgements of others and ourselves. Perfect Me was also voted one of the 19 best books of 2018 by The Atlantic, and one of the 100 best books to read in a lifetime by Edarabia. Perfect Me has also been mentioned in Vogue, Vogue Japan and Paper Magazine.

Beauty Demands Network

Widdows is a co-founder of the Beauty Demands Network. The project began with an AHRC Network Grant on 'The Changing Requirements of Beauty' which finished in June 2016. Beauty Demands publishes a blog every two weeks, and in 2016 published a Briefing Paper. The briefing paper contains key findings of the network in ethics, psychology and law, and makes policy recommendations based upon these. The briefing paper was launched at the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in June 2016.

#everydaylookism

Widdows launched a social media campaign to end body shaming at the Annual Global Ethics Conference at the University of Birmingham in June 2019. Widdows argues that lookism is a prejudice that is more prevalent and more damaging in a virtual culture where our bodies are ourselves. Body shaming is shaming people. Lookism has become so common that we have come to accept it, and even worse, expect it. The campaign asks people to share their lookism stories on social media using the hashtag or anonymously via the website. #everydaylookism has been mentioned by The Telegraph, Birmingham Live. and The Body Cons Podcast.

Media

Heather has been quoted in The Guardian, the New York Times, Vogue, BBC Newsround, Seventeen. and Le Monde. She has also appeared on BBC Two's Victoria Derbyshire programme, and been interviewed by BBC Radio 4 and ABC Radio (Australia).

Select bibliography

In addition to her books, Widdows has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in edited collections.

Books

  • Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal
  • The Connected Self: The Ethics and Governance of the Genetic Individual.
  • Global Ethics: An Introduction.
  • The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch.

Edited collections

  • Handbook of Global Ethics, Edited with
  • Global Social Justice, Edited with Nicola Smith.
  • The Governance of Genetic Information: Who Decides?, Edited with Caroline Mullen.
  • Women's Reproductive Rights, Edited with Itziar Alkorta Idiakez and Aitziber Emaldi Cirión.