Maggie O'Brien
Assistant Professor
Email: mjobrien@yorku.ca
Media Requests Welcome
Accepting New Graduate Students
I research and teach in feminist, legal, and political philosophy. I am particularly interested in the questions that come up at the intersection of these areas. My current work is on standing—both legal standing and moral and political standing. Standing (to a first approximation) means the right to perform certain sorts of speech-acts. I am developing a feminist case for a skeptical view about the value of standing norms according to which they are pernicious, especially to women and other marginalized groups.
I am the recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2025-2027) for my project Standing, Politics, and Disagreement.
Before starting at York, I taught at the University of Edinburgh in both the Law School and Philosophy Department. I received my PhD in philosophy from McMaster University in 2016 and completed a Masters in Studies in Law from the University of Toronto in 2017.
O’Brien M. #MeToo and #ShoutYourAbortion: Claiming Standing and Exploding the Private Sphere. Legal Theory. Published online 2025:1-20. doi:10.1017/S1352325225000126
Maggie O’Brien (2022) Easy for You to Say, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 100:3, 429-442, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2021.1919723
O'Brien, Maggie and Alexandra Whelan, "Hypocrisy in Politics". Ergo, forthcoming.
Standing to Praise and Standing to Blame? forthcoming in Thought.
I research and teach in feminist, legal, and political philosophy. I am particularly interested in the questions that come up at the intersection of these areas. My current work is on standing—both legal standing and moral and political standing. Standing (to a first approximation) means the right to perform certain sorts of speech-acts. I am developing a feminist case for a skeptical view about the value of standing norms according to which they are pernicious, especially to women and other marginalized groups.
I am the recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2025-2027) for my project Standing, Politics, and Disagreement.
Before starting at York, I taught at the University of Edinburgh in both the Law School and Philosophy Department. I received my PhD in philosophy from McMaster University in 2016 and completed a Masters in Studies in Law from the University of Toronto in 2017.
All Publications
O’Brien M. #MeToo and #ShoutYourAbortion: Claiming Standing and Exploding the Private Sphere. Legal Theory. Published online 2025:1-20. doi:10.1017/S1352325225000126
Maggie O’Brien (2022) Easy for You to Say, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 100:3, 429-442, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2021.1919723
O'Brien, Maggie and Alexandra Whelan, "Hypocrisy in Politics". Ergo, forthcoming.
Standing to Praise and Standing to Blame? forthcoming in Thought.

