Many of our members have returned to campus this fall as in-person classes have resumed, and we are very excited to be joined by several new graduate students & postdocs. Please join us in extending a warm welcome to the following people: New Graduate Student Members: Pepijn Al, Yi-Hsuan Kao, Kardelen Kucuk, Amy MacKinnon, Todd [...]
We'd like to start this month's post with some exciting news from Heather Stewart. Heather (supervised by Carolyn McLeod) successfully defended her thesis titled "The Moral and Political Status of Microaggressions" on July 28th via Zoom. She has also accepted a position at Oklahoma State University as an Assistant Professor. Congratulations Heather! We wish you [...]
Last May, Chris Letheby delivered a fascinating lecture, Philosophy of Psychedelics, as part of our Emerging Minds colloquium series. Video of his talk can be seen on the Rotman Institute YouTube channel (or via the link below). Following the talk, attendees had an opportunity to submit written questions. Because there were more questions than [...]
Our first piece of exciting news in this bi-monthly post comes from Francesca Vidotto. Francesca was named Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Foundations of Physics in June. The CRC program is designed to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences [...]
We'd like to start off this post by sharing some exciting news from Becky Ellis and John Lehmann. Becky (supervised by Tony Weis) defended her PhD thesis tilted “Pollinator People: an ethnography of bees, bee advocates, and possibilities for multispecies commoning in Toronto and London,ON” on April 15th via Zoom and John (supervised by Robert DiSalle) [...]
by Anthony Skelton Ending the pandemic will require mass vaccination for COVID-19. But will it be achieved simply by leaving vaccination to the voluntary choice of individuals? If not, is it permissible for institutions or states to mandate vaccination for COVID-19? It is not uncommon for institutions or the state to mandate public health measures [...]
This article, Three Postdoctoral Associates in Philosophy Focus on AI, is reprinted with permission from Western's Faculty of Arts & Humanities. Artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies pose new opportunities and challenges across many domains of our lives. Philosophers are uniquely equipped to address the underlying assumptions and potential conflicts that arise from integrating these [...]
Written by Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton Mandating COVID-19 vaccination for children is cross-posted from the Practical Ethics blog, of the University of Oxford. In many countries vaccine rollouts are now well underway. Vaccine programmes in Israel, the United Kingdom, Chile, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United States have been particularly successful. Mass vaccination [...]
Our first piece of exciting news in this bi-monthly post comes from Craig Fox. Craig (supervised by Chris Smeenk) defended his PhD thesis tilted "An Empiricist Defense of Scientific Stories About the Past" on March 18th via Zoom. Congratulations, Craig! Our next piece of exciting news comes from Rotman alumna Marie Gueguen. Marie was awarded an MSCA [...]
Marie Gueguen is an alumnus of the Rotman Institute, who completed her doctorate under the supervision of Chris Smeenk in 2019. She was recently awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Individual Fellowship (IF) grant by the European Commission. Her unique project will embed her in a research group working with molecular physicists and astrochemists--one of [...]
