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Interview with PhD Kwesi Thomas

Published: September 23, 2026

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Imagine preparing for your PhD’s final oral exam and organizing a conference on the subject for the very next day. That is what Kwesi Thomas successfully did in June 2026 as scholars of W. E. B. Du Bois gathered from around North America to discuss the storied Black American sociologist, … Read More

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Recent PhDs – Spring 2026

Published: May 13, 2026

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The Philosophy Department congratulates the latest PhDs to defend their dissertations. David Rattray defended “Getting Purposes in Mind,” supervised by Denis Walsh in October 2025. Denis Walsh describes David Rattray’s work as a highly innovative dissertation that “draws out some of the implications of agent-centred evolutionary biology for traditional issues … Read More

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Welcoming the Inaugural Michael & Virginia Walsh Chair in History of Philosophy: Stephen Menn

Published: January 9, 2026

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The Department of Philosophy is delighted to welcome Stephen Menn, the inaugural Michael & Virginia Walsh Chair in History of Philosophy. His main areas of research are in ancient Greek philosophy (with current projects in Aristotle, in the pre-Socratics, and in neo-Platonism), in medieval Arabic and Latin philosophy, and in … Read More

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2025 Martha Lile Love Essay Award

Published: December 15, 2025

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We are delighted to announce Alexander de Guzman as the winner of this year’s Martha Lile Love Essay Award for his paper, “Outsourced Deliberation: Attention, Advertising, and the Myth of Control.” He wrote the essay for an independent study with Sara Aronowitz. The selection committee noted about the award-winning essay, … Read More

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Our Latest PhD

Published: December 10, 2025

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Congratulations to Liang Zhou Koh, the most recently minted PhD in the Department of Philosophy at U of T. He successfully defended his dissertation in the field of epistemology titled “Knowing Together,” written under the supervision of Jennifer Nagel. He has now taken on a postdoctoral fellowship in the Philosophy … Read More

On a U of T blue background, headshots of, from left to right, John Miller, David Rattray, and Kristen Beard. Miller is a bearded Metis man standing in front of a vast shore landscape, while w=Rattray, a white man with short brown hair, sits full frame in a blue button down, and Beard sports long blonde hair, glasses, and a big smile standing in front of a primarily yellow bookcase.

Recent PhDs

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The Department of Philosophy congratulates its three most recent PhDs: In September, John R. Miller successfully defended his dissertation titled “Wahkootowin Ethics: A Métis Approach to the Ethics of Kinship,” supervised by Andrew Franklin-Hall. Miller currently holds the position of lecturer at the University of Victoria. David Rattray and Kristen Beard … Read More

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“The Privacy of First-Personal Perspective”: A Piece of Public Philosophy by Munema Moiz

Published: September 30, 2025

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In “The Privacy of First-Personal Perspective: Engaging with Indian Philosophy of Cosmopsychism,” published on the Blog of the APA, Philosophy graduate student Munema Moiz discusses one of contemporary philosophy’s most pertinent challenges–the so-called hard problem of consciousness–and then critically examines it through the lens of non-Western thought, specifically, that of … Read More

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New Book Publications

Published: September 17, 2025

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Congratulations to Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen and Bob Gibbs on the publications of their latest books: Larsen’s Psychopathy Unmasked: The Rise and Fall of a Dangerous Diagnosis, published by MIT Press, brings to the fore the scientific wrongheadedness of society’s fascination with psychopaths and examines how the criminal justice system has misused … Read More