Graduate Students
Spencer Ahearn
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Jack Zupko
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Philosophy of Education
Description of research interests: My capstone project explores the recent decline in the literacy skills of Canadian students and how to address that decline, primarily through the work of Paulo Freire. I am also interested in virtue ethics, social epistemology, and philosophy of love.
Eduardo Andrade
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Amy Schmitter
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Early Modern Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy
Description of research interests: My research examines David Hume's social and political philosophy through the interconnected themes of faction, power, and moderation. I develop Hume as a proto-social scientist keenly attentive to how power operates in society and to the consequences of factionalism. Reading him against Hobbes, I treat Hume as a theorist of power who grounds authority in effective power rather than legitimate right. Though he is often construed as a philosopher of moderation, my research highlights the central importance of conflict in his politics—offering a historically sensitive lens on authority, social hierarchy, and the management of division in his works.
Brianne Campbell
MA
Interim Supervisors: Dr. Jennifer Welchman (Fall) and Dr. Howard Nye (Winter)
Area of research or thesis topic/title: General research area - Ethics
Description of research interests: Social-Political Philosophy, Legal Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Moral Psychology, Philosophy and Popular Culture
Paul Chellew
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Howard Nye
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Meta-normativity
Augustine A. Farinola
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell and Dr. Howard Nye
Area of research or thesis topic/title: AI Ethics, Experimental Philosophy and Philosophy of AI
Description of research interests: My research sits at the intersection of philosophy, digital humanities, artificial intelligence and applied ethics to issues in Healthcare, Migration, and Cybersecurity
Papia Sen Gupta
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Philosophy of AI
Description of research interests: Philosophy of Technology; Phenomenology; Decolonial Feminist methodologies
Amber Jorgenson
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Luke Kersten
Area of research or thesis topic/title: TBA
Description of research interests: philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, self identity and wellbeing, human flourishing
Ayushi Khemka
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of AI, Social Epistemology, Digital Humanities
Description of research interests: philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, self identity and wellbeing, human flourishing
Junseo Lee
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Jack Zupko
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Consciousness, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Self, Philosophy of Language
Description of research interests: My primary philosophical interests include metaphysics, phenomenology, religion, mathematics, literature, and ethics. Broadly, I am drawn to questions of being and non-being, the self, experience, consciousness, and relationality. What is the self? Is an experience different from the experiencer? Can consciousness be totally aware of its content?
A few philosophical thinkers which have shaped my thinking are J. Krishnamurti, Bernadette Roberts, U.G. Krishnamurti, and G. Spencer-Brown.
Paige Messier
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Jennifer Welchman
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Aesthetics, Ethics, Environmental philosophy
Description of research interests: I am interested in issues where aesthetics and environmental ethics intersect. My research focuses on the sublime (especially the aerial and celestial sublime) and how the effects of climate change and industrialization (e.g., light pollution, urban smog, satellite constellations) obscure our access to aesthetically appreciating sublime phenomena in the sky. Since sublime experiences of nature can promote positive environmental values in the observer, this obscurity is both a matter of environmental justice and reveals the social inequalities of aesthetic accessibility.
Emad Mousavi
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell and Howard Nye
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Philosophy of Technology, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind
Lucarosa Perry
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Jorge Sanchez Perez
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Colonialism and the Negotiation of Human/Nonhuman Relations Where Worlds Collide
Tyson Sereda
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Marie-Eve Morin
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Time and Post-hapto-onto-theo-teleology
Description of research interests: My research focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary French philosophy, with particular emphasis on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. I put these thinkers in conversation to examine competing accounts of difference, immanence, and finitude, and to ask how each responds to the legacies of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. My recurring concerns include time and temporality, the philosophy of sense and embodiment, and the role of topology, the fold, and the virtual in Deleuze and Derrida.
Jesse Trussler
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Amy Schmitter
Area of research or thesis topic/title: I am currently a part-time, course-based student, but my primary interests surround consciousness and philosophy of mind.
Maddie Youngman
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Kim Q. Hall
Area of research: Critical Phenomenology and Queer and Trans Philosophy.
Thesis title: In Between Subverting Gender and Sexuality: A Lesbian Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Existence
Description of research interests: Maddie's work focuses on queer and trans lived and embodied experiences.
Zachary Yuzda
PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Kim Q. Hall
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Phenomenology, Philosophy of Disability, and Philosophy of Sport
Description of research interests: I am interested in how individuals can use their experiences to imagine themselves differently situated. Primarily my research is focused on disabled and nondisabled athletes, however, I am currently researching how to expand this to our day to day lives. I seek to break down ableist assumptions of normal through exploring how our imagination lets us build new experiences and empathize with individuals different from us.
Brendan P. Ziebart
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Ingo Brigandt
Area of research or thesis topic/title: Philosophy of Law / Philosophy of Language & Metaethics
Description of research interests: My research tracks issues in the philosophy of language and jurisprudence as they appear in interpretive legal contexts. My work draws heavily on Frege, Kripke, Soames, Dworkin, and Finnis to examine the uses and necessary limits of semantic theories, and other theories of meaning more broadly. I am specifically interested in where semantic explanations for legal disagreement break down, and what this reveals about the relationship between linguistic meaning and legal interpretation.