Karri Heikkinen
I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy at University College London (UCL).
My doctoral research aims to make progress on questions raised by future generations in moral philosophy. I also have interests in animal ethics, the ethics of AI, interpersonal aggregation, political liberalism and socialism.
In Spring 2024, I undertook a 3-month UKRI Policy Internship at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, producing a report titled “Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare in Scotland”. You can read the report here.
Research
Publications:
- Heikkinen, K. 2025. Why intergenerational sufficientarianism is not enough. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 24(2), 101-123.
- Heikkinen, K. 2025. Can we eat animals whose existence depends on it? Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 30(6), 890-914.
Selected works in progress:
- A paper proposing a novel theory of population ethics.
- A paper on anti-aggregative objections to longtermism.
- A paper on the ethics of creating people, and why obligations to our contemporaries are, to some extent, more weighty than our obligations to future people.
Teaching
I am an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE). I have worked as a Post-Graduate Teaching Assistant at UCL since 2022, teaching for the following modules.
As primary instructor, designing and delivering the whole module:
Philosophical Study Skills, with focus on AI Ethics (1st year, 2024)
As a tutor, leading small-group tutorials, designing learning materials and marking coursework:
Introduction to Philosophy of Computer Science (1st year, 2025)
Free Speech and Theories of Autonomy (3rd year, 2025)
Philosophy of Altruism (3rd year, 2024)
Topics in Political Philosophy (2nd year, 2023)
Ethics (2nd year, 2023)
Introduction to Political Philosophy (1st year, 2022)
Get in touch
You can email me at karri.heikkinen.20@ucl.ac.uk
Karri Heikkinen 