Lecturer in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice at University of Aberdeen since 2023. After moving at a young age from the UK to South America, JP studied his undergraduate at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Chile), and then returned to pursue his postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained an LLM in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice and is currently completing his PhD. 

JP's research and teaching focuses on the criminal law, its theory and practice, and in criminal justice more widely. He is particularly interested in the philosophy of criminal law broadly understood, with a specific interest in criminalisation theory and its metanormative implications. 

Having grown up in Chile and qualified as a lawyer there before returning to the UK for his postgraduate studies, JP has had a unique chance to learn and understand the criminal law from the perspectives of both continental/civil law and common law jurisdictions. He is also interested in interdisciplinary teaching and research, particularly regarding law and philosophy.

JP is working on developing two broad research themes:

- Criminal Law and Metanormative Theory: how our theoretical understanding of how norms and reasons work affect our understanding of criminal law doctrines and institutions.

- Mental States and Evidence: how the different ways in which the mind and mental states are used in the criminal law, and specifically how we provide evidence for them within a criminal process, is affected by our understanding of the brain, the mind and their links to normative contexts and decision-making in assigning meanings to actions.

Research interests:

Criminal law theory

Criminalisation

Philosophy of Criminal Law

Criminal Justice and Process

Criminal Evidence

Metaethics and Metanormative Theory