Heather Widdows

Heather Widdows is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, specializing in applied ethics, global ethics, bioethics, moral philosophy, and feminist philosophy. She teaches a post-graduate module on Appearance, Identity and Visual Culture and serves on the British Philosophical Association (BPA) Executive. Her professional service includes Deputy Chair of the Philosophy sub-panel for REF 2021 and membership on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2014-2020) and UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (2007-2013).

Her research examines beauty as an ethical ideal, analyzing how beauty demands create structural injustices and lookism. She investigates the impact of social media, selfie culture, and visual representation on identity formation, while extending her work to global ethics, reproductive rights, and genetic ethics. Key themes include the commodification of human tissue, governance of genetic information, and ethical frameworks for biobanking.

Widdows co-founded the Beauty Demands Network and Blog with Dr. Fiona MacCallum and initiated the #everydaylookism project to document daily experiences of lookism. Her book Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (2018) received widespread acclaim, being described by Vogue as 'ground-breaking' and listed by The Atlantic as one of the best books of 2018.