Welcome to the Iowa Care Lab at the University of Iowa!
Led by Asha L. Bhandary, Ph.D., we are evaluating the role of care in human life and working toward a society in which care is provided in ways that meet needs while respecting the freedom of every individual. The ICL is a Philosophy Research Lab that annually hosts visiting philosophers and runs a student-centered think tank for mentored research on care and the many ways care is shaping and changing questions about the nature of social cooperation, the bounds of personal freedom, and the ties that bind us together.
Abby Rush
Care Lab Administrator & Website Designer, Philosophy Department
Asha L. Bhandary
I am a feminist philosopher and a social and political philosopher, and an expert in care theory and liberal political theory. My current work evaluates how our existing and unjust caregiving arrangements obstruct the path of autonomy for women of color. In two published books, Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture (Routledge 2020) and Caring for Liberalism, with co-editor Amy R. Baehr (Routledge 2021), two books in progress, Being at Home: Living Autonomously in an Unjust World (Oxford University Press) and Reproductive Justice for a Caring Society, with co-authors Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, Lina- Maria Murillo (Agenda Press), a digital humanities video game titled Surviving the “Indifferents”, more than fifteen articles and book chapters, and over fifty lectures, I advance a systematic theory of the just distribution of care, one that responds to marginalized social positions. This theory of just care asserts full claimant status for the category of people implicitly assigned to be caregivers.