Jules Holroyd is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Their recent book, Oppressive Praise (Oxford University Press), was shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Institute of Philosophy Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize. Working at the intersection of feminist philosophy, moral psychology, and social philosophy, Holroyd explores how seemingly positive forms of moral appraisal can reinforce structures of oppression. In this spotlight, they discuss the social and political dimensions of praise, the role of stereotypes in shaping moral recognition, and how practices of praise might be transformed to resist sexism, racism, ableism, and other forms of structural injustice.
What is your work about?
My book is about the oppressive dimensions of praise. I started exploring this in a paper (also called “Oppressive Praise”, published in Feminist Philosophical Quarterly in 2021) and found many interesting issues that required further attention!
Whilst many authors have supposed that praise is largely positive and beneficial, I was intrigued by the suggestions—initially in work by Mich Ciurria (2019), Nathan Stout (2020), Emily Bingeman (published in 2024, first presented at a workshop on praise in 2021), and Sofia Jeppsson & Daphne Brandenburg (2022)—that praise could be harmful. I’d noticed patterns of praise in daily life that seemed to me informed by stereotypes, and wanted to understand further what might be going on in those cases.
So one of the key things I try to do in the book is to work through a number of cases, and articulate what is going wrong when we see patterns of praise shaped by (e.g.) sexist, racist, or ableist stereotypes. Central examples in the book concern fathers getting praised for participating (at all) in parenting whilst mothers are expected to do plenty without recognition; black students being highly praised for intellectual competence (when they exceed “the racism of low expectations”); disabled people being praised for overcoming the assumed obstacles their bodies present…these are just some examples amongst others (once you start looking for examples of problematic praise, they abound!).
One of my concerns was that the conceptual resources usually brought to bear in thinking about moral appraisals—like desert or consequences—didn’t seem adequate to capture how praise in these cases was distorted, nor the harms involved. The problems can’t be captured solely in terms of undeserved praise or praise that has harmful consequences. And recent suggestions that people in privileged positions get more praise than those in disadvantaged positions also didn’t seem to capture the problem (since sometimes stereotype-informed low expectations correspond to higher praise).
In the book, I argue that one way of understanding these cases—which I hope is illuminating—is as causally and normatively implicated in oppression: informed by, and themselves entrenching, oppression in Iris Marion Young (1990)’s senses. In particular, I argue that praise can be a form of cultural imperialism (evaluating people through the lens of dominant stereotypes); it can entrench exploitation (devaluing some people’s labor and achievements); and marginalization (e.g., by pigeonholing women into caring roles, stereotyping disabled people as incompetent).
One of the things I found exciting about trying to articulate the contours of the problem was how doing so could help us evaluate existing understandings of moral appraisals. The cases I was intrigued by were ones in which praise has a role in expressing values to wider audiences, and does so not only in what the praise explicitly celebrates (parenting, or intellectual competence, or bravery, in the three examples mentioned above), but in the evaluative frameworks presupposed by the praise: sexist assumptions about who should parent and who is good at it; racist assumptions about black people’s competences; ableist assumptions about the nature and source of challenges disabled people face. In contrast, many current understandings have focused primarily on the form or content of praise and its role in dyadic interactions. Thinking about oppressive praise helps expand our understanding of the role of praise in our social practices in interesting ways.
This meant there was scope to develop positive accounts of what praise does and how, as well as some norms we might need to do it well: norms to do with using praise to dismantle oppression, as well as norms to do with ensuring that we are not expressing oppressive social meanings. I also wanted to think about how we might resist oppressive praise, both in the moment in which it is expressed (which can be hard!), or at some later point. But ultimately, I argue that if any one expression of oppressive praise is an instance of a wider pattern of structural injustice, then fully addressing it will require efforts to dismantle oppression more widely, not only in appraisive interactions and reactions. And I try to suggest we can apply the framework from my book to think about statues. I was really delighted to have Jess Isserow warmly and generously review the book, in Ethics—and her critical points are spot on!
What directions would you like to take your work in the future?
I think there are so many interesting questions that arise in relation to praise and so much interesting work currently being done on positive moral appraisals (e.g. by Hallvard Lillehammer, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Daniel Telech, Zoe Johnson King, Timothy Kwaitek, and Cheshire Calhoun, amongst others), so I’m excited to continue working in this area (also because the work falls squarely in the newly developing field of Positive Moral Philosophy, which has been launched by Cheshire Calhoun and Karen Stohr, both of whose work I admire greatly!).
Since finishing the book, I’ve been thinking about whether recipients of praise should have the relevant standing, in the way that some folks think that expressers of praise should—I’m glad that this work will be in a volume on the Morality of Praise, edited by Hallvard Lillehammer. I’ve also been thinking about the contours of functionalist accounts of praise, and (with Shen-yi Liao) about why we sometimes use things to express praise (most of the literature to date has focused on verbal praise). I think there are probably very interesting things to be said about institutionalized forms of praise; something I may work on in the future!
But I have a few other projects keeping me busy also—in particular, a project on gender inclusive language, which has been really exciting because it has enabled me and colleagues (Matthew Cull and Fiona Woollard) to take some of our work in applied philosophy of language and, well, actually apply it! We’ve been working with care providers to help them develop gender inclusive language in perinatal care, which has been illuminating and refreshing.
Where would you like to go to do research in the future, if you could go anywhere?
I recently had the lovely experience of spending my term of research leave as a visiting fellow at the University of Milano Statale in Italy (and was also able to participate in the intellectual life of San Raffaele). There is such a vibrant community of folks in philosophy in Milan—and working in feminist philosophy in particular—and I had such a wonderful time. I’d like to go back!
Jules Holroyd
Jules Holroyd is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Their recently published book, Oppressive Praise, published by Oxford University Press, was shortlisted for the Royal Institute of Philosophy Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize 2025. In this spotlight, they discuss some of the key ideas in the book, as well as other areas of recent research.
Richard B. Gibson is Editor of the Current Events in Philosophy and the Bioethics series. He is a bioethicist with research interests in human enhancement, emergent technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification.
