Francesca Minerva

Dr. Francesca Minerva is an Italian bioethicist. She is a research fellow at the University of Milan in Italy. Between 2011 and 2020 she worked as a post-doc at the University of Melbourne in Australia, at Ghent University in Belgium, and at the University of Warwick in England. Her research focuses on applied ethics, including lookism, conscientious objection in medicine, academic freedom, and cryonics.

She is a member of the advisory board of the Brain Preservation Foundation and the European Biostasis Foundation.

Education
In 2005, Minerva obtained Laurea magistrale (equivalent to BA plus MPhil) from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Pisa in Italy. She graduated summa cum laude.

In 2010, she obtained PhD in bioethics from the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna in Italy. Her dissertation is called "Can Conscientious Objection in Medicine Be Morally Justified?".

Publications
Minerva has authored or coauthored over 30 academic papers.

With Anders Sandberg, she published an article "Euthanasia and cryothanasia" (2017). In it, they argue that administering cryothanasia is ethically different from administering euthanasia. In their view, objections to euthanasia should not apply to cryothanasia, and cryothanasia could also be considered a legal option where euthanasia is illegal.

Her book The Ethics of Cryonics (2018) was published by Palgrave Pivot.

With Jeff McMahan, and Peter Singer, she founded the Journal of Controversial Ideas.