Miscellanea
There are three projects I have been involved in during my time at UNC that I am particularly proud of. Click on each photo to learn more!
First, I co-founded and organized the first two iterations of the Duke-UNC Graduate Philosophy Conference (2022 and 2023). Despite Duke and UNC's close proximity, they lacked the joint graduate conferences that many other philosophy departments have (e.g., Harvard-MIT, Columbia-NYU). Our first year, we limited participation to just Duke and UNC students, hoping to build community and rapport between the two departments. Our second year, we opened up our CFA to external submissions. Both years were a resounding success.
Second, I served as one of two inaugural Graduate Coordinators for the department's Balter Undergraduate Fellowship. The goal of this fellowship is to promote philosophy's applicability to a wider variety of topics than what typically gets explored in the department's course offerings. Each fellow develops a project centered around one such topic that they'd like to explore (e.g., philosophy and mental illness, philosophy and cruelty) and works alongside the Graduate Coordinators to execute it. The fellowship culminates in each fellow leading a seminar on their topic in a series called "Reimagining Philosophy", open to the entire university community. This was an incredibly rewarding experience and I was grateful to have the opportunity to help guide the fellows in their project development.
Third, in my capacity as a Research Assistant for the Applied Epistemology Project, I am producing a series of animated "mini-explainers" on a wide range of topics in applied epistemology. Each explainer is written by an expert in the field with an eye toward simplicity and accessibility. They give an overview of the current state of research on the question and then explain their own view. The first video (on conspiracy theories, written by Giulia Napolitano) is currently up, and soon to come are videos on polarization, ignorance, free speech, and partisanship.
You can watch the mini-explainers here.