Our Department has an excellent placement record. Since 1996, over 70% of graduates have continued on to tenure-track academic positions. The vibrancy of the Department’s philosophical culture (as shown, for instance, by its active colloquium series), its strength in a broad range of areas of philosophy, and the outstanding reputation of its faculty combine to attract some of the nation’s most talented graduate students.
We are very pleased with our recent placement record. It is organized below by the year the Ph.D. was earned, beginning with the most recent year. Next to each graduate is the name of their institution and dissertation title.
| Alumnus | Employment | Thesis |
|---|---|---|
2025 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Caleb Hazelwood | Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies (TT), University of Wyoming | Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Models |
2023 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Tara Weese | Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Science (TT), Central Connecticut State University | Conceptions of Victimhood: Legal, Political, and Psychological Dimensions |
2022 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Qiu Lin | Assistant Professor of Philosophy (TT), Simon Fraser University | Three Essays about Problems of Space in the Early Modern Period |
| Robert Bingle | Learning and Development Specialist at the Trenton Corporation | Anger Eliminativism: Stoic and Buddhist Perspectives |
| Kobi Finestone | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Chapman University, Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy | Making Models Work |
| Angela Bischof | Instructor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro | Animals as Moral Agents |
2021 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Hannah Read | Postdoctoral Fellow, Wake Forest University | Empathy for Opponents: A Cognitive, Emotional, and Institutional Approach to Moral Conflict |
| Valerie Soon | Assistant Professor of Political Science (TT), University of California, San Diego | The Problem of Sorting: A Dilemma between Freedom of Association and Social Justice |
| Hannah Bondurant | How to Inform and Transform Oneself | |
| Erick Sam | Associate Professor of Law (TT), University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law | The Right of Exit: Emigration, Secession and the Structure of International Taxation |
2020 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Songyao Ren | Assistant Professor (TT), University of Texas at Dallas | Dispassion and the Good Life: A Study of Stoicism and Zhuangism |
| Joseph Nelson | A Defense of Basic Hedonism | |
| Tim Burkhardt | University of Colorado Boulder | Death is Nothing! A Defense of Epicureanism |
| Heather Wallace | Founder, Writing is Thinking | The Other's Freedom: Existential Vulnerability in the Philosophy of Simone de Bouvier |
2019 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Ewan Kingston | Assistant Professor (TT), College of Charleston | Bad Goods: On the Political Morality of Production and Consumption in Global Supply Chains |
| Bryce Gessell | Assistant Professor of Philosophy (TT), Southern Virginia University | Materia Mentis: How the Brain Sculpts the Mind |
| Max Beninger | Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Salzburg | The Mental Workspace: Working Memory and Its Relation to Attention and Consciousness |
| Matthew Harris | Continents in Cognition | |
| Lauren Bunch | Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Professionalism (TT), Mercer University School of Medicine | Authenticity and Enhancement |
| Paul Henne | Assistant Professor (TT), Lake Forest College | Omissions, Causation, and Modality |
| Sungwoo Um | Assistant Professor (TT), Seoul National University | The Virtues of Intimate Relationships |
2018 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Rafael Ventura | Senior Consultant, Simon-Kucher & Partners | Evolutionary Models of Language |
| Lok Chan | Engineer at Curi | Deliberative Bayesianism: Abduction, Reflection, and the Weight of Evidence |
2017 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Aaron Ancell | Assistant Professor (TT), Bentley University | Public Unreason: Essays on Political Disagreement |
| Jing Hu | Assistant Professor (TT), Concordia University (Montreal) | A New Perspective on Sympathy and Its Cultivation, with Insights from the Confucian Tradition |
| Susanne Meyer | Flavors of Responsibility | |
2015 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Aryn Conrad | William D. Bowen, Associate | On the Functions of Morality |
| Nathaniel Gindele | Webpoint, Developer | A Naturalistic Philosophy of Play |
| James Ong | Assistant Professor (TT), New York City College of Technology | Inhabiting Difference |
| Gordon Steenbergen | Assistant Professor (TT), Lycoming College | Understanding Cognition |
| Daniel Stephens | Assistant Professor of Humanities (TT), Duke Kunshan University (China) | The Sage's Psychology: Confucianism Naturalized |
2014 - Year of Graduation | ||
| David Barack | Platt Labs, Research Associate | Mindcraft: A Dynamical Systems Theory of Cognition |
| Carlos Mariscal | Assistant Professor (Tenured), University of Nevada, Reno | Universal Biology |
| Stephen Martin | Associate, Ballard Spahr | Irresistible Reasons, Immovable Minds, and the Miracle of Rational Persuasion |
2013 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Robert Williams | Peircean Naturalism | |
| Nathan Morton | Ontologist, Amazon | Articulating the Core Realist Commitment |
| John Park | Assistant Professor (TT), Oakland University | Theories of Concepts and Ethics |
2012 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Matthew Braddock | Assistant Professor (TT), University of Tennessee at Martin | Debunking Challenges to Moral Realism |
| David Crawford | Visiting Fellow, National Cancer Institute | Philosophy: Chance Begets Order: Hierachical Probabilistic Processes in the Natural Sciences; Biology: Hierarchical Transition Via Individuation, Not Integration: How the Filamentous Fungi Challenge the Standard Model |
| Leonore Fleming | Associate Professor (Tenured), Utica College | Variance, Selection and Evolutionary Explanation |
| Daniel Kraemer | Adjunct Professor, Florida International University | Making Sense of Normative Functions and Information in Neurobiological Systems |
2011 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Sanem Soyarslan | Assistant Professor (TT), NC State University | Reason and Intuitive Knowledge in Spinoza's 'Ethics': Two Ways of Knowing, Two Ways of Living |
| Breanna Kerchner | Visiting Assistant Professor - two year, Lafayette College in Easton, PA | Humean Supervenience |
2009 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Rachell Powell | Associate Professor (Tenured), Boston University | Reading the Book of Life: Contingency and Convergence in Macroevolution |
| Andres Luco | Instructor, Auburn University | Desire and the Rationality of Virtue |
2008 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Hagop Sarkissian | Professor (Tenured), Baruch College and the Gradate Center, CUNY | After Confucius: Psychology and Moral Power |
| Sahar Akhtar | Associate Teaching Professor, Georgetown University | Topics in Rational Choice |
| Sun Kyeong Yu | Associate Professor (Tenured), Minnesota State, Mankato | Reducing Biology |
| Elizabeth Jelinek | Associate Professor & Chair, Christopher Newport University | Platonic Teleology Through An Aristotelian Lens |
2007 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Woojin Han | Associate Professor (TT), Duksung Women's University | A Construction of A Posteriori Physicalism |
| David Kaplan | Assistant Professor (TT), Monash University | The Nature and Bases of Spatial Representation |
| Grant Ramsey | BOFZAP Research Professor, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium | Culture from Infrahumans to Humans: An Essay in the Philosophy of Biology |
2006 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Kevin DeLapp | Harold Fleming Chair of Philosophy, Converse College | Re-enchanting Morality: A Defense of Pluralistic Moral Realism |
| Nita Farahany | Professor of Law and of Philosophy, Duke University | Rediscovering Criminal Responsibility through Behavioral Genetics |
2005 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Robert Conrad | Software Application Developer and System Administrator, Sandia National Laboratories | Conceptual Structures of Moral Experience in Cross-Cultural Comparative Analysis |
| Caery Evangelist | Associate Professor (Tenured), University of Portland | Medieval Intelligibility: The Relationship Between Mind, World and Transcendental Truth in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas |
| Avram Hiller | Associate Professor (Tenured), Portland State University | Vagueness and Normativity |
| Marion Hourdequin | Professor (Tenured), Colorado College | Nature and Normativity: Biology, Culture, and the Evolution of Ethical Norms |
| Stefan Linquist | Associate Professor (Tenured), University of Guelph, Canada | The Descent of Mind: An Evolutionary Account of the Higher Cognitive Emotions |
| Joel Schickel | Data Scientist, CareSource | Freedom of the Will, Passion, and Virtue in Descartes’s Theory of Judgment |
| Tamler Sommers | Associate Professor (Tenured), University of Houston | Beyond Freedom and Resentment: An Error Theory of Free Will and Moral Responsibility |
| Andrew Terjesen | Attorney, McGuire Woods | The Role of Sympathy and Empathy in Moral Judgment, with Special Reference to Adam Smith and David Hume |
| William Wojtach | Content Developer, The Great Courses | An Empirically Constrained Study of Visual Perception |
| Frédéric Bouchard | Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Montreal, Canada | Evolution, Fitness and the Struggle for Persistence |
2003 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Boris Kukso | Trial Attorney, US Department of Justice | Trouble for Truthmakers: Negation and Possibility |
| Anthony Williams | Assistant Professor (TT), College of Charleston | Moral Conflict and Incommensurability |
2002 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Alan Galloway | Non-academic position | Moral Perception |
2001 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Todd Davis | Non-academic position | Science and the Constitutive a priori: Ian Hacking’s Philosophy of Science |
| Michael Muth | Assistant Professor (TT), Wesleyan College | The Augustinian Background of Bonaventure’s Doctrine of Order |
| Eddy Nahmias | Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University | Free Will and the Knowledge Condition |
| Thomas Osborne | Assistant Professor (TT), University of St. Thomas Professor (Tenured) of Philosophy & Chair, University of St. Thomas | The Natural Love of God Over Self: The Role of Self-Interest in Thirteenth-Century Ethics |
| Brook Sadler | Associate Professor (Tenured) and and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of South Florida | Amoralism and the Justification of Morality |
2000 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Steven Geisz | Char & Associate Professor (Tenured), University of Tampa | Speaking Wordly: An Adverbial View of Representation |
| James E. Mahon | Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Lehman College, CUNY | Motivational Internalism and the Authority of Morality |
| Thomas Polger | Professor (Tenured), University of Cincinnati | Natural Minds |
| Elizabeth Schiltz | Professor (Tenured) & Department Chair of Philosophy, College of Wooster | Sophrosune and Mania: The Rise and Study of Moral Psychology |
1999 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Gokhan Adalier | Professor of Business Administration, Eastern Mediterranean University | The Structure of Judgments and Knowledge in Plato’s Theaetetus |
| Carla Fehr | Associate Professor, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, & Gender and Social Justice Advisor, University of Waterloo, Canada | A Natural History of the Evolution of Sexual Reproduction: The Virtues of Explanatory Pluralism |
1998 - Year of Graduation | ||
| James Allman | Non-academic position | Language, Speakers, and Metaphor |
1997 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Joseph U. Neisser | Assistant Professor (TT), Sam Houston State University Associate Professor at Grinnell College in Iowa | The Embodied Approach to Cognition: A Defense |
| Glenn Sanford | Professor, Sam Houston State University | Explaining Evolution: Genes, Culture, Environment, and Mechanisms |
1996 - Year of Graduation | ||
| Gillian Brock | Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand | |
| Donald Scott Carson | Associate Professor and Director of Studies, Honors Program in Philosophy, Ohio University | Being and Truth: Elements of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Language |
| Jack Wilson | Associate Professor (tenured), Washington and Lee University | Living Entities: Identity and Persistence |