Rate My Professor Hamish Russell

Dr. Hamish Russell is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Philosophy within the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. He teaches ethics and political philosophy, including units for the Human Rights and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) majors. In semester two 2024, his teaching included components of PPHE1001 Justice, Liberty, and the Market, HUMR2001 Global and Environmental Justice, and HUMR1001 Human Rights in Global Perspective. He has also taught ethical theory, political philosophy both historical and contemporary, professional ethics, and philosophy of sexuality. Russell has supervised student projects in political philosophy, philosophy of sexuality, and applied ethics. Prior to UWA, he was Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Russell holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, awarded in 2022, with a dissertation titled 'Roles and the Filtering of Reasons.' He earned a BA (Hons) in Philosophy from the University of Auckland in 2013 and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Otago in 2012. His research focuses on the ethics of institutions, especially the ethics of roles in complex and imperfect institutions. He investigates how professional roles such as lawyer, lecturer, or business executive shape moral obligations and whether it is ethically permitted or required to disobey unjust rules of roles. Key publications include 'Balancing, Shielding, Filtering: Three Models of Role Morality' in Business Ethics Quarterly (2026), a review of Chiara Cordelli's The Privatized State in Constellations (2023), and 'Abusive tax avoidance and responsibilities of tax professionals' (with Gillian Brock) in Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2016). Awards include the Best Dissertation Award (2023), Course Instructor Teaching Award (2021), and Amartya Sen Essay Prize (2014).