Corey Cusimano is a cognitive scientist investigating how people evaluate their own and others’ mental states. His research asks questions like: how do ordinary people decide that an emotion or belief is good or justified? And: when, and why, do people hold others responsible for their thoughts, desires, and feelings? He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. More information about his work can be found at www.coreycusimano.net.
Ryan Darr is a postdoctoral research associate in Philosophy and Religion with interests in religion and ethics. His research focuses on the role of religion and theology in the development of modern notions of agency, causality, and responsibility. In addition to completing a manuscript on the theological origins of utilitarian moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he is working on a project on individual moral responsibility regarding large scale structural problems such as climate change. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University.
Alexander Englert, a Philosophy and Religion Postdoctoral Research Associate, earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. He investigates the intersection of natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the German Idealist tradition. Currently, he is studying this intersection through Kant’s Opus postumum, as well as in relation to Kant’s argument for the immortality of the soul and the highest good. He has been published in Hegel Bulletin, Hegel-Studien, and Kantian Review.
Emily Foster-Hanson is a cognitive scientist studying how kids and adults represent categories and use them to learn. Her research asks why people sometimes think of categories, like animal species or social groups, in terms of prescriptive beliefs about what they should be like. Her work also addresses how children learn about categories from listening to adults talk. She holds a BA in Linguistics from Yale University, and a PhD in Psychology from New York University. More information about her work can be found at www.fosterhanson.com
Ashley E. Gorham is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Values and Public Policy, affiliated with the Center for Information Technology Policy in the Woodrow Wilson School. Her research uses political theory to examine a variety of topics related to the internet, including hacktivism, algorithms, and platforms. Gorham recently defended her dissertation, “Information and Democracy: Lessons from the Hacktivists,” in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2018-19, she was a research fellow at NYU’s Information Law Institute and an affiliate of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
August Gorman is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Values and Public Policy affiliated with the Center for Health and Wellbeing in the Woodrow Wilson School. Their work focuses on impairments to agency and their implications for theorizing in normative domains. At the University Center for Human Values they will be working on a project that explores the theoretical grounding for, and societal impact of, different measures of well-being for people with mental health conditions. August holds a Ph.D. in philosophy at USC, and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics.
Kathryn E. Joyce is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Values and Public Policy affiliated with the Education Research Section in the Woodrow Wilson School. Her current project explores normative questions about evidence-based school improvement as a strategy for advancing educational justice, focusing on how research concerning the causal effectiveness of educational interventions can be used to address unequal academic opportunities and outcomes in the U.S. Joyce recently received her PhD from the University of California San Diego where she defended a dissertation on relational egalitarianism that accounts for the nature and value of standing and relating to one another as equals. For more information about her research, visit kathrynejoyce.com.
Ewan Kingston is a political philosopher who investigates the design of institutions which interact with business to respond to global change. His dissertation concerned grave flaws in global supply chains and the prospects for remedying them. Hailing from New Zealand, Ewan received his Master's from Victoria University of Wellington before gaining a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Elizabeth Li is a postdoctoral research associate in Philosophy and Religion. Her research engages perspectives from philosophy, theology, religion, and the history of ideas with particular focus on nineteenth-century thought and Søren Kierkegaard. She is interested in questions related to the relationship between philosophy, religion, and theology, and the ethical and epistemological value of ambiguity and difficulty. Elizabeth holds a BA in Philosophy & Science Studies from Roskilde University, an MSt in Literature and Arts and an MPhil in Modern Theology from the University of Oxford, where she is completing her DPhil in Theology. She has published in journals such as the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook and International Journal of Philosophy and Theology.
Michael Rabenberg is a philosopher whose work focuses on normative issues concerning death. Three interrelated questions guide much of his research: (1) Is death ever bad for the one who dies; and if so, under what circumstances, why, and to what extent is death bad for the one who dies? (2) What attitudes ought one have concerning one’s own death? (3) Under what circumstances, and why, are we morally required to prevent other people from dying; and under what circumstances, and why, are we morally permitted to kill other people? Rabenberg holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and an A.B. in philosophy and English from Kenyon College.
Emma Rodman is a Values and Public Policy Postdoctoral Research Associate with appointment in the University Center for Human Values and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. Emma received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington in 2020, and will join the faculty as an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2021. Emma is a scholar of American political thought with a particular interest in the meanings of political concepts. Much of her work traces the unwritten histories and paradoxical political effects of seemingly "self-evident" political concepts in American life. Her studies employ archival research, interpretative close reading, and machine learning methods that trace the meanings of concepts quantitatively across large volumes of text.
At Princeton, Emma will be working on a book project, The Idea of Equality in America. In that project, she argues that the concept of equality is both more complex and more hierarchical than is typically supposed. By disentangling and historically situating ideas of moral, social, and economic equality, the book highlights both the tensions between different valences of equality and the historical shifts in their political salience. Looking from the late colonial era to the present, the book shows how some of these registers of equality have actually produced and naturalized hierarchy, and have had a sabotaging relationship to democratic participation and inclusion.
Daniel Rubio is a postdoctoral research associate in Philosophy and Religion. He is working on the University Center for Human Value's project in philosophy and religion. Daniel received his doctorate in philosophy from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and has research interests in metaphysics, decision theory, ethics, and religion. His work has appeared in venues such as Philosophical Studies and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.