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 the best of luck in your new endeavours.
Our next piece of exciting news comes from Rotman alumna Rachael Brown. Rachel was awarded the 2021 Australasian Association of Philosophy Inclusive Curricula Prize due to her course PHIL2126: Science in Society: Ethics, Public Policy and Scientific Practice that she teaches at the Australian National University. Please join us in congratulating Rachel on this wonderful achievement!
All other member news is listed below in alphabetical order.
Michael Barnes gave three talks in July. One was at the University College Dublin Online Conference on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories; the second was a pre-recorded talk for the North American Society for Social Philosophy annual conference; and the last was at the Feminism, Social Justice, and AI Workshop.
From July 5 – 8, Jonathan Bowen attended the Summer School in Protocell Methods: Coacervates and Vesicles hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics.
Samantha Brennan had two recent publications. “Diversity and Inclusion Projects in the University Context: Moving Scholarship and Policy into Institutional Practice,” forthcoming in Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonisation: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research and Scholarship. Bristol: Bristol University Press and “To Grandmother’s House We Go”: On Women, Ethics, and Aging in Cambridge Handbook on the Ethics of Aging. Samantha has also been blogging as Dean at https://deaning.uoguelph.ca/.
Andrew Chater had an article, “Inuit in the Arctic Council: How Does Depiction Differ?“, published in the Northern Review.
Benjamin Chin-Yee virtually presented a paper “On the Uses and Abuses of Biomarkers in Clinical Judgment” at the 2021 Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable (Michigan State University, June 29, 2021) and at the BSPS Annual Conference 2021 (University of Kent, July 9, 2021). He also recently published a paper in Big Data & Society “COVID-19, digital health technology and the politics of the unprecedented“.
Melissa Jacquart and Lucas Dunlap (with co-authors Amanda Corris, Zvi Biener, and Angela Potochnik) recently published the article, “Divergence of Values and Goals in Participatory Research” in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
Carolyn McLeod, Mahi Hardalupas, Michael Barnes, , Heather Stewart, and Emily Cichocki presented “A Perfect Storm for Epistemic Injustice: Algorithmic Targeting and Sorting on Social Media” at the Workshop and Special Journal Issue on Feminism, Social Justice and AI hosted by the University of Waterloo and at CEPE (Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry)/IACAP (International Association for Computing and Philosophy) Joint Conference 2021: The Philosophy and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, virtual and hosted by the Department of Informatics, Universität Hamburg.
Matthew Parker’s paper “Weintraub’s Response to Williamson’s Coin Flip Argument” was just published online in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science. The paper seeks to progress the philosophical debate over whether a possible event can have probability zero.
Vicente Raja, Miguel Segundo Ortin and Manuel Heras have signed a contract for a book in honour of Harry Heft in Routledge.
Carlo Rovelli was featured in Prospect Magazine’s annual list, The world’s top 50 thinkers 2021.
Anthony Skelton & Lisa Forsberg co-authored an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Should we delay COVID-19 vaccination in children? A National Post article titled “Are COVID vaccines for children under 12 in their best interest — or just everyone else’s?” included comments from Anthony.
The New Directions in Philosophy of Cosmology research group, led by Chris Smeenk, has three interdisciplinary events planned for August 2021 that’ll bring together philosophers & physicists: Conference on Philosophical Aspects of Simulations in Cosmology, Emergence in Cosmology Workshop, and the Self-locating Uncertainty in the Cosmological Multiverse Workshop.
Max Smith contributed to a recent brief by Ontario’s Science Advisory Table on vaccine passports for COVID-19 and contributed to the development of an ethical framework for the World Health Organization’s role in the ACT Accelerator. Max had four recent journal articles published: What Constitutes Success in the Rollout of COVID-19 Vaccines?, Mere Rhetoric? Using Solidarity as a Moral Guide for Deliberations on Border Closures, Border Re-openings, and Travel Restrictions in the Age of COVID-19, Why We Should Not ‘Just Use Age’ for COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritisation, and Should COVID-19 Vaccines Authorized for Emergency Use be Considered ‘Essential’ Medicines?. He also had three recent publications in popular media: Balancing Speed and Equity in the Rollout of COVID-19 Vaccines in the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog, Delaying Second Vaccine Doses Helped Avert ICU Catastrophe in Healthy Debate, and Should COVID-19 Vaccination be a Condition for Returning to University and College Campuses? in University Affairs.
An article titled “Grey Matter – The Problems of Incidental Findings in Neuroimaging Research” by Charles Weijer and Nicholas Murphy was published in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics by Cambridge University.
Pictured above: Matt Parker giving a talk via Zoom
