Margaret P. Battin, PhD

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah

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Margaret “Peggy” Battin, PhD, MFA, is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. She was born in 1940 and grew up in Washington, DC, attending Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania for her undergraduate education and eventually earning both a philosophy PhD and fiction MFA at the University of California, Irvine. During this interview, Battin speaks to her decades-long work on end-of-life issues: describing various articles, books, and short stories that she’s authored; exploring language around suicide and aid in dying; and reflecting on the experience that merged her scholarly interests with her personal concerns and priorities, notably her husband’s cycling accident and subsequent paralysis.

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This interview would be interesting to students, clinicians, philosophers, historians, and ethicists curious about the founding of the field of bioethics from a more philosophical vantage point, fiction writers or appreciators of fiction, people interested in unconventional career paths, people involved, or interested in, the end-of-life, aid in dying movement (and conversations around the legality of this issues), people with a connection to or interest in the Southwest and bioethical questions that emerge from that area, those who have personal experience with death and dying, and/or people engaged in language/linguistic practices.

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