Professor Bird specializes in political theory. He is the author of The Myth of Liberal Individualism, (1999). He has been a contributor to Ethics, The American Political Science Review, Political Theory and other journals. His research interests include the theory of distributive justice, the nature and limitations of liberal political thought, theories of self-government and democracy, and the assessment of contemporary defences of political perfectionism. He is now working on a project exploring the politics of respect and social recognition and was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University during the 2001-2 academic year.