Rate My Professor Holly Lawford-Smith

Lawford-Smith's research specializations lie in moral and political philosophy, encompassing social ontology—including the nature and properties of the social world, collective action, agency, and responsibility—climate ethics, experimental philosophy, and feminism, particularly gender-critical feminism and conflicts of interest between marginalized groups such as women, lesbians, gay people, and trans people. She is the author of several books: Not In Their Name: Are Citizens Culpable for Their States’ Actions? (2019), which received the Annual Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Award and examines whether states act as agents, citizens' culpability for state actions, models of collective agency, and responsibility in contexts like asylum-seeker policies; Gender-Critical Feminism (2022); Sex Matters: Essays in Gender-Critical Philosophy (2023); Is It Wrong To Buy Sex? (2024); and Feminism Beyond Left and Right (2025). Her scholarship addresses legal definitions of sex, women-only spaces, trans inclusion in liberal states, academic freedom, and hate speech laws, contributing to ongoing debates in political philosophy and feminist theory.