Dr Emily Brady

Professor Emerita of Philosophy

ebrady@tamu.edu

Welcome to my website! I’m a philosopher based in Scotland. My research and teaching interests span aesthetics and philosophy of art, environmental ethics, eighteenth-century philosophy, environmental humanities, and animal studies. 

I recently retired from full-time academic work, having previously held positions as: Professor of Philosophy (2018-2025) and Susanne M. and Melbern G. Glasscock Director of the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research (2018-2022) at Texas A&M University; and Professor of Environment and Philosophy in the Institute of Geography and the Lived Environment at the University of Edinburgh (2005-2013). I began my career spending ten years in the Philosophy Department at Lancaster University in England.

In current research, I explore interactions between aesthetics and ethics, specifically through other-regarding attitudes toward the natural world, e.g., forms of aesthetic attention, humility, wonder, natural beauty, and the sublime. Lately, I have been writing about aesthetics and climate change, as well as editing a major handbook on the sublime for Oxford University Press, alongside co-editors, Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie. In earlier work, I focused on the place of imagination, perception, and emotion in aesthetic experience of environment. Many moons ago, I wrote my PhD dissertation on  the topic of pictorial representation and imagination. 

I am a past President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics and have served on the Executive Committees of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and the British Society of Aesthetics, as well as having been a Trustee of the American Society of Aesthetics. Currently, I serve on the International Advisory Boards of the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics and the Center for Animal Ethics and on the editorial boards of Ethics, Policy, and Environment; Plant Perspectives: An Interdisciplinary Journal; and Studi di Estetica. Previously, I was Associate Editor of Environmental Values and Co-Editor of Society and Space. I’m an Honorary Partner of the Everyday Aesthetics Network and an invited member of the Consortium of Environmental Philosophers.

At Texas A&M, I created and led the interdisciplinary research initiative Humanities: Land Sea Space. While at the University of Edinburgh, I was a founding member of the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network. My research has been supported by funding from the AHRC, the British Academy, the Finnish Academy, DEFRA, NEH, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Texas A&M. 

Northern Lapwing/peewit (Vanellus vanellus), North Uist