Matthew Burch

Dr Matthew Burch

Early Career Fellow 2018-19

The Theory of Risk and the Practice of Care: Bridging the Gap

Today’s dominant theories of risk offer decision-making guidance based on probabilistic reasoning. While extremely powerful in some domains, such theories offer little guidance for frontline care workers who make decisions about risk in an environment where the relevant probabilities are either unknown or too small to be useful. Unfortunately, this mismatch between the theory of risk and the practice of care is often overlooked, and institutions demand that care workers “manage risks” as if they were in a position to accurately forecast future outcomes. This creates practical and ethical problems on both sides of the care relationship.

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Areas of interest

Philosophy Disability Religion Phenomenology Health Mental Health Human Rights Risk Philosophy of MInd Cultural Studies

Cohort

ECF4

Biography

Matt Burch is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, the Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Centre, and the Deputy Director of the Essex Autonomy Project. He has published on diverse topics, e.g., deliberation, disability rights, objectivity, weakness of will, religious experience, and the phenomenology of illness. What brings unity to this diversity is his methodological approach of “applied phenomenology”, which he defines as a research program that brings the phenomenological method and the resources of other disciplines to bear on problems beyond the scope of any mono-disciplinary approach. He has worked on several projects with the Essex Autonomy Project, including an AHRC-funded project on the compliance of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Wellcome Trust-funded Mental Health and Justice project. From 2018-2019, he had an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation. His current research draws on the resources of risk studies, phenomenology, human rights discourse, mental capacity law, the philosophy of mind, and literary and cultural studies to develop a concept of risk suitable for singular risk decisions and a basic account of normative guidance for such decisions.

Biographical details correct as of 04.02.25