Writings

Technology and society

The Self-Absorbed Bubble of Managerialism

On the belief that any organization can be reduced to its financial components and managed by formula

Immoral Hazard

On risk, bailouts, and who actually bears the cost of failure

A Happier Internet

What real innovation toward a healthier social media would require

Chatbots and the Divine

On the limits of impersonal means for knowing, or loving, another person

You Can’t Fact Check Propaganda

On the limits of fact-checking as a response to coordinated disinformation

After the Fall of Silicon Valley Bank

Why the tech world needs to start thinking institutionally
European intellectual history

What Counts as Antisemitism?

A review essay on two books charting shifting definitions of antisemitism

Adolf von Harnack and "What is Christianity?"

How one scholar’s account of Christianity shaped a century of debate about religion and modernity

The Confessions of Peter Brown

On the historian Peter Brown and the modern practice of writing history

Another Betrayal of the Intellectuals

A historian charts the evolution of her own center-right liberalism

Return of the Repressed

On the fading of the post-Auschwitz consensus against overt antisemitism

Confessing Secularism

How German secularists built a belief system of their own after 1848

Belonging to Europe

On the return of national identities the European project was meant to dissolve

Unveiling Our New Modernity

Why the present feels increasingly discontinuous with the twentieth century
Peer-reviewed & in progress

Recent academic publications

Journal article · 2026

Flourishing Considerations for AI

With Tyler J. VanderWeele · Information 17(1), 88 · Principled considerations for evaluating AI systems against human flourishing rather than engagement or capability alone
Journal article

Optimising for Flourishing: Flourishing Metrics and Return on Flourishing as Success Criteria for Artificial Intelligence and Post-AGI Economic Systems

With Keyun Ruan and John M. Bremen · A framework proposing human flourishing as a primary success criterion for AI and post-AGI economic systems
Journal article

Love of Neighbor Assessment: Validity, Reliability, and a Template for Measurement

With Tyler VanderWeele et al. · Frontiers in Psychology
Journal article

Into the Metaverse (with Lex Fridman and Mark Zuckerberg): Exploring the Ontological Adventures, Potentials, and Risks of a New Dimension of Being

With Tim Lomas et al. · Journal of Humanistic Psychology
2017–ongoing

Books

Edited volume · forthcoming

The Common Good in the Age of AI

Co-edited with Richard Wood and Ian Marcus Corbin · Bloomsbury
Edited volume · forthcoming

Oxford Handbook of the Historical Reception of Theology

Co-edited with Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross · Oxford University Press
Book · 2018

Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition

Oxford University Press · Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, 2019