Ulrika Carlsson

Ulrika is working on a dissertation about the role of love in Kierkegaard’s understanding of philosophy. Her other interests include the philosophy of art & aesthetics. Before coming to Yale in 2006, she studied Philosophy, English, French and Russian at Lund University in Sweden, where she received her BA in 2004, and at UCLA, where she was an exchange student in 2004-05.

Julianne Chung

Julianne entered the program in 2009. Her primary areas of interest are epistemology, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics. She is particularly interested in the problem of skepticism and related issues.

Tim entered the program in 2006. He works on ancient philosophy, with a particular focus on metaphysical topics in Plato and Aristotle. His dissertation is on Aristotle's engagement with Eleatic monism.

Pamela Corcoran

Pam joined the program in 2007. She is interested in metaphysics and language, especially as regards kinds - natural and otherwise. She firmly believes that it is indeterminate whether XYZ is water or not. Other interests include modality, the nature of propositions, and her two amazing dogs she adopted from a rescue organization.

Francesca Crocetti

Francesca Crocetti graduated from the University of Florence in 2000 with a Thesis on the theory of freedom in Schopenhauer. She published in February 2003 an anthology on Schopenhauer and music. During the following years she published several papers in the Philosophical Review «Parénklisis» (www.clinamen.it), focusing, in particular, on philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Arendt. In June 2009 Francesca published a book entitled "Anime Belle. Poetica e modernità". During the same year she also translated in Italian and edited a work from Wilhelm Marr on "Anarchy or authority?". Francesca is now living in Florence and working at her Dissertation.

Thomas Feeney

Thomas studied philosophy at Notre Dame and Judaism at Oxford.  He came to Yale in 2008 and has worked mostly on metaphysics and early modern philosophy (especially Leibniz). His dissertation will focus on Leibniz's idea that evaluative categories and degrees of perfection play an important role in metaphysics.  Thomas also has interests in medieval philosophy (Scotus), virtue theory, and the dispute between platonism and nominalism.

Eric Guindon

Eric works mainly in philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology, and fuels his philosophical reflections with high volumes of tea and capsaicin.  Before coming to Yale in 2008, he completed a BA in philosophy at McGill University and an MA at Universite de Montreal.
Eric also loves to climb steep walls of rock and ice.

Sungil Han

Sungil entered the program in 2006 after completing a B.A. and a M.A. in philosophy at Seoul National University, Korea. Sungil is currently writing a dissertation on synthetic unity under the advice of the great espouser of the principle of sufficient reason. In connection with the dissertation, his current main interests are in distinctness, connectedness, composition, persistence, and explicability (scientific explanation). He also likes learning from conversations with dead philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, Frege, Bradley and Quine. He is a good drinker.

Jessica Keiser

Jessica entered the program in 2010. Her philosophical interests include the philosophy of language and value theory. She enjoys painting portraits and making things.

Nicky Kroll

Nick is from North Dakota.  He is interested in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Website: http://nkroll.com

Markus Labude

As an undergraduate, Markus studied philosophy and economics in the German town of Bayreuth and at the National University of Singapore. In 2004, he graduated with a BA in Philosophy & Economics from the University of Bayreuth. Subsequently, Markus spent one year as a graduate student at the University College London. He joined Yale's PhD program in 2005. Markus enjoys traveling and hopes to visit all 50 American states one day.
You can visit his website at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~ml557

Matthew V. Lindauer

Matthew V. (Matt) Lindauer is in his second year in the Ph.D program  in Philosophy at Yale.  He earned his B.A. with Honors in Philosophy at NYU, writing a senior thesis under Kit Fine.  He is the founder of  Students for Global Health at Yale and co-founder of the Philosophy,  Psychology and Psychiatry Research Group (with Dr. Andres Barkil- Oteo).  His main areas of research interest are political philosophy,  global justice, moral psychology and cognitive science.

Mark entered the program in 2008 after (finally!) completing his B.S. in physics at MIT.  He is interested in philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, especially in exploring how intuitions and theories developed in modern science can be a guide to metaphysics and epistemology in general. More recently, his studies have him wondering if any sufficiently advanced metaphysics is indistinguishable from physics.

Aaron Norby

B.A., UC Berkeley, 2006.    Aaron entered the Ph.D. program in Philosophy in 2007.  Aaron is interested in epistemology and philosophy of mind, and in the intersection between philosophy and empirical psychology.  He is currently in his third year

Stephen Ogden

Stephen Ogden earned his B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies at Rhodes College in 2005.  After teaching in Egypt and completing a fellowship in Maryland, he came to Yale where he received his M.A.R. in Philosophy of Religion in 2008.  He entered the Philosophy department in the fall of 2009.  Stephen likes to think about metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion.  His chief interests concern medieval Arabic and Latin philosophers (e.g., Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and Aquinas), particularly on questions of Aristotelian metaphysics and the active intellect.  His other passions include coffee, movies, and distance running.

Jonathan Phillips

I received my undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and entered the Ph.D. program in philosophy at Yale in 2010. Much of my interest surrounds the ordinary concepts of freedom, causation, moral responsibility and happiness. At the same time, though, I am deeply interested in the way that counterfactual reasoning can explain a great deal about both philosophical and folk intuition. Thus, I suppose my work falls broadly somewhere at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science. Website:�http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jp677/.

John Pittard

Originally from San Antonio, Texas, John entered the graduate school in 2006 after completing an M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and an A.B. in economics at Harvard. He is currently working towards a joint Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religious Studies and is writing a dissertation on the epistemology of disagreement, religious and otherwise. John's philosophical interests include epistemology, philosophy of religion, ethics, and early modern philosophy.

Sara Protasi

Sara Protasi is a fourth-year PhD student. She was a BA student in philosophy at University of Rome--La Sapienza, where she wrote a thesis on the concept of phronesis in Aristotle and contemporary ethics. She was then a doctoral student at University of Bologna, where she wrote a thesis on the normative dimensions of romantic love. En route to Yale, she also visited University of Michigan--Ann Arbor and University of Chicago. Her main philosophical interests are in ethics broadly construed, especially in moral psychology and the philosophy of emotions. She is also developing competencies in ancient philosophy, aesthetics, and feminism. Her main passion outside of philosophy is dance. She studied ballet, modern and contemporary dance, jazz, tango, and flamenco. At Yale she is a proud member of A Different Drum Dance Company.

Daniel Putnam

Daniel Putnam is a first-year Ph.D. student. Currently my main interests are in political philosophy, particularly the relationship between justice and equal respect, and philosophy of mind, including phenomenal consciousness and the mind-body problem. But I like talking about pretty much any philosophical topic where I can follow the conversation. In addition to loving wisdom, I enjoy fiction (both reading it, and trying to write it), theater, and travel; sleep is another recurring favorite. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, I received my B.A. from Swarthmore College in 2008.

Evan Rodriguez

Evan received his B.A. from Haverford College in 2008 and now is part of Yale's Classics and Philosophy Program (in the philosophy track).  His present focus concerns Socratic and Platonic method, particularly in Plato’s longer works, and the relationship between philosophic, scientific, and sophistic inquiry.  Spinoza provides another historical point of interest.  Evan thinks there is also much to be gained from more recent (both explicit and implicit) judgments about the role of the philosopher, and while he sees the classical perspective is valuable in its own right, he has found it can be useful for contemporary debates as well.  When off-campus Evan tries his best to balance academic pursuits with baking, barefoot running, and Kyudo.

Christina Rulli

Tina works in moral philosophy. Her dissertation The Duty to Adopt is  a sustained argument for the claim that we have an obligation to adopt  existing needy children rather than create new ones. The project is  motivated by analogy of "the orphan problem" to familiar rescue cases  where the duty to rescue would apply. The adoption obligation is a specific instance of the claim, put in terms familiar to population ethics debates, that we ought "to make people happy rather than make happy people." The project includes investigation of the moral  significance, if any, of the genetic relationship between parent and  child and the possibility for a moral permission to pursue this relationship despite the strong reasons to adopt instead. Tina also  has interests in political philosophy, global justice, bioethics and  metaphysics. She is an organizer for the Yale Working Group in Moral  Philosophy. Tina entered the program in 2005. She received her B.A. in  Philosophy and German from the University of Denver in 2003.
Website: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clr47/

Anat Schechtman

Anat's dissertation offers a new reading of the (in)famous proof for the existence of God in the Third Meditation, proposing that Descartes there argues, in transcendental fashion, that grasping the infinite is a condition for the possibility of grasping the finite. In addition to Descartes and Kant, Anat has philosophical interests in early modern philosophy in general, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. She is a graduate of Tel Aviv University, where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and mathematics, and recently received a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. She is also an organizer for the Society of Early Modern Philosophy at Yale (www.yale.edu/sempy).

Kelley Schiffman

Kelley Schiffman entered the philosophy graduate program at Yale in the fall of 2009 after earning her bachelor's degree in philosophy from UC San Diego in March 2009 (spending the spring in between studying German in Berlin). Her primary philosophical interests include early modern philosophy, German idealism, and philosophy of religion. Kelley also enjoys spending time outdoors, cooking vegan food, and playing the banjo.  

Esther Shubert

Esther Shubert entered the philosophy Ph.D program in fall 2009 after earning her her bachelor's degree in philosophy the previous spring from the University of Toronto. Her current interests are primarily in moral and political philosophy, specifically in questions of global justice. She is also a member of Yale's Global Justice Program, working on various projects related to global poverty and health.

Alex Silverman

Alex entered the program in 2007 after benefiting from the fine undergraduate philosophy program at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.  He is principally interested in the history of early modern philosophy, and is currently writing a dissertation centered on Spinoza's theory of attributes. His other interests include metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ancient philosophy, and medieval philosophy.

Jason Smith

Jason Smith has interests in Nietzsche, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy of religion. He is currently working on a dissertation entitled: 'Truth and Beatitude: Nietzsche's Vision of Eternal Recurrence'.

Sandhya Thakrar

Before joining the Philosophy Department at Yale in 2004, Sandhya completed her B.A. (Honours) in Philosophy at the University of Calgary.  Her interests include ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of the emotions, and the relationship between philosophy and literature.  She is currently working on a dissertation on romantic love.

I did my undergraduate degree at Rutgers University before coming to Yale in 2004 to pursue a PhD in philosophy.  At Yale, I have been working with Shelly Kagan and Jules Coleman on a dissertation that focuses on the role of epistemic limitations in normative ethics and the law. Specifically, I am trying to work out a theory for risky actions (especially when they do not eventuate in harm).  In working out such a theory, I explore the implications for other debates in ethics— particularly the debate between objectivists and subjectivists. Beyond issues in ethics and philosophy of law, I also have strong interests in eastern philosophy, philosophy of race and gender, and metaphysics.   Apart from research, I am very interested in teaching philosophy, both at the college and high school levels (and perhaps even at younger levels). In 2008, Arik (scroll up) and I developed and acquired funding (through Yale and the Squire Family Foundation) for a philosophy outreach program, which has afforded us an opportunity to teach a class on critical thinking and philosophy at a local public high school.  I have also been an advisor (and previous attendee of) the Rutgers Institute for Diversity in Philosophy since 2003.  Both of these programs attempt to expand the range of people exposed to philosophy (I myself, wouldn’t have chosen this path but for the Diversity program), and I hope to continue developing such programs in the future.

Jonathan Vertanen

Jonathan entered the program in 2009.  He's interested in metaphysics, philosophy of language, Aristotle, and bicycles.

Julia von Bodelschwingh

Julia received an M.A. in Philosophy and American Studies from the University of Göttingen in her native Germany. Then, in 2008, she came to Yale to do a combined degree in  Philosophy and Religious Studies. Her main interests are early modern philosophy (especially Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Hume), philosophy of  religion, free will, and medieval philosophy. She also  enjoys cooking and baking for (or with) friends, going to the theater,  hiking, literature, and traveling.

Leslie Wolf

Leslie is principally interested in metaphysics, and he is currently writing a dissertation on persistence. His other interests include philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, ancient philosophy and early modern philosophy.

Alexander Worsnip

Alex is in his first year of the PhD, having previously received a BPhil in Philosophy and before that a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics, both from Oxford University. He is interested in many areas of philosophy, but is currently most occupied by epistemology, ethics (particularly meta-ethics), and the interaction between the two. He is also interested in historical questions within these areas, so far primarily in the work of Kant. At Oxford he worked with Ralph Wedgwood, John Broome, Ralph Walker and Terry Irwin. Outside philosophy his interests include baseball (despite his British heritage), theatre, politics and indie music, all of which he over-intellectualises to the frustration of his non-philosopher friends.

Tim Yenter

Tim Yenter hails from the exotic Midwest. He is writing a dissertation on David Hume's response to the religious metaphysics of the early eighteenth century. His passions include teaching, early modern philosophy, the Green Bay Packers, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and television. You can find more information about Tim at http://www.inessentials.com/philosophy/