Background: I recently received a D.Phil from Oxford for a dissertation on the metaphysics and semantics of `qua'. I argue that qua-qualifications, such as `John is corrupt qua judge' or `The baseball bat qua weapon is dangerous', ascribe relativized properties to individuals and I develop a detailed theory of such qua-properties which is explanatory and adequate in that it gives a clear metaphysical analysis of how qua-qualification is possible and makes correct predictions about the linguistic behaviour and inferential profile of qua-qualifications.

As part of the Human Abilities project, I'll be investigating to what extent abilities can be had as or qua object of a certain kind. Are there abilities which Donald Trump has qua president but which he lacks qua human being? What would it be for a person to be identical to their body yet have different abilities qua body than qua person? Does the statue lack the ability to survive squashing qua statue while having the ability to survive squashing qua piece of clay? And if so, what do such qualified abilities consist in? Moreover, I'll be looking into the effects of linguistic opacity on the truth conditions of ability ascriptions, and into some interesting questions ability ascriptions raise with regard to the distinction between objective and subjective modalities.