Kristen Beard

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Position:

Graduate Student

Campus:

St. George,

Biography:

  • BA, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Kristen is a PhD candidate whose research lies at the intersection of philosophy of language and Peircean pragmatism. She is especially interested in covert, indirect, and nonverbal types of language. These include phenomena such as political dogwhistling, insinuation, connotation, inside jokes, and all manner of linguistic discourse such as prosody, register, genre, and modality.

In addition to philosophy, she has a passion for issues surrounding mental health and disability. During the pandemic she trained as a peer counsellor and helped found our department’s inaugural Mental Health & Disability Caucus. She continues to serve as co-organizer and recently received a Graduate Student Service Award for her work in this role.

Before attending the University of Toronto she received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy with a minor in Physics from the University of Tennessee.

To learn more about Kristen and her work, visit her personal website.

Research Interests:

Decision Theory, Epistemology, Logic, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Science, Pragmatism, Semantics and Pragmatics