Daniel Butt is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford. He is co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory Network. He previously held positions as Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Bristol, Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College, Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Keble College, Oxford.

He is a political theorist who principally works on a range of questions related to justice, with a particular focus on debates relating to global justice and the reparation of past wrongdoing. He is particularly interested in the case for reparations in the aftermath of colonialism. He has published widely on this subject in both the academic and popular press.

Selected publications

• Rectifying international injustice: principles of compensation and restitution between nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
  
  
• “Settling claims for reparations”, Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity 11.7 (2022), 60–79.
  
  
• “What structural injustice theory leaves out”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2021), 1161–1175.
  
  
• “Historical emissions: does ignorance matter?”, in Lukas Meyer and Pranay Sanklecha (eds.), Historical Emissions and Climate Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
  
  
• “Law, governance and the ecological ethos”, in Stephen Gardiner and Allen Thompson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2016).
  
  
• “‘A doctrine quite new and altogether untenable’: defending the beneficiary pays principle”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 31.4 (2014), 336–348.
  
  
• “Repairing historical wrongs and the end of empire”, Social & Legal Studies 21.2 (2012), 227–242.
  
  
• “On benefiting from injustice”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2007), 129–152.
  
  
• “Nations, overlapping generations and historic injustice”, American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2006), 357–376.