Katerina Jennings

Uehiro Scholarship for Future Generations

Joining us from: London, UK
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DPhil Philosophy (2023)

My name is Katerina Jennings, and I’m pursuing a DPhil (PhD) in Philosophy at the University of Oxford with funding from the Uehiro Scholarship for Future Generations and the Oxford Faculty of Philosophy. I am in my third year. 

With the support of the Uehiro Scholarship, my DPhil thesis will explore the ethics of single-sex spaces - such as prisons, single-sex schools, and sport - and the distinct philosophical challenges that each will pose to transgender inclusion.

I will explore whether such spaces are morally permissible and will question the overall legitimacy of single-sex spaces in contemporary society. Since receiving the scholarship last year, I have since passed my Confirmation of Status, a significant DPhil milestone. Now, I am busy working on finalising my thesis for this summer with the support of my fantastic supervisors.

My interest in this subject follows from my work conducted during my Master’s at the Uehiro Institute, which culminated in a paper on the regulations that require intersex athletes to suppress their testosterone levels published in the top-ranking bioethics journal, the American Journal of Bioethics.  

Writing on such a controversial issue requires significant philosophical input into policy that has not yet been conducted in the literature; thus, I cannot express enough gratitude to the Uehiro Foundation for providing me with the funding I need to live in Oxford full-time while working diligently and carefully on this highly publicised and politicised topic. Without this funding, I would not have been able to leave my career in New York to pursue this DPhil. 

This funding has also aided me greatly in the time I’m able to spend co-authoring a public-facing book, Gender Ethics: Navigating the Debates with Brian Earp, one of Uehiro’s distinguished faculty members and Associate Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Philosophy at the National Institute of Singapore. In the book, we demystify these difficult conversations for a broader audience, with or without a philosophical background. This book will be published by Polity Press in 2027.