I conduct public talks and outreach on a variety of philosophical themes. Please reach out to me to learn more, or to have me visit your class or event.
Philosophy for Children
Philosophy for Children (p4c) is a methodology and term that refers to outreach and engagement activities aimed at introducing K-12 students to philosophy and its methods. It introduces K-12 students to philosophy, teaching them how to think for themselves while at the same engaging in respectful discussion with others. It teaches them how to think collaboratively and how to communicate about meaningful topics and questions. Best of all, teaching philosophy opens up the world of Ideas for exploration, and builds their leadership, empathy, and character — skills we carry through our entire lives. Through cultivating communities of inquiry, we foster curiosity, develop critical thinking skills, and explore big questions.
Since 2022, I have trained groups of graduate and undergraduate students in facilitating philosophy for children (p4c) style outreach at Clifton Area Neighborhood (CANS) school. We go into 5th and 6th grade classrooms bi-weekly during the school’s social-emotional learning time. This outreach is done in partnership with the Cincinnati Ethics Center.
Science & Inquiry
Approaches to public engagement around science must address the complexity of issues such as trust in science, political polarization, the identities and worldviews of scientists, and understanding scientific methods and their social structure. Philosophy has rarely been incorporated into public engagement with science efforts, yet philosophy has the potential to make valuable contributions to this effort, as philosophers examine these very topics.
I hold a Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship and UC Office of Research URC Award for my project, Bringing Philosophy to Science Fairs. This project is an after-school Philosophy & Science Fair Club 6th-12th grade students in Cincinnati. I work as part of the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Public Engagement with Science and partner with the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative to create lesson plans designed to introduce students to the philosophical and other humanistic aspects of science by identifying a theme, such as space exploration or climate change, and then deploying philosophical methods of inquiry to deeply investigate it. For example, students may consider how scientists’ intellectual context and worldviews impact the scientific method and process of discovery, or the role trust plays in the public’s understanding of scientific findings. Over fifteen weeks, students develop individual projects related to the shared theme and informed by philosophical discussion. The club will culminate with each student entering their project in the Southwest Ohio Science and Engineering Expo Science Fair, one of the nation’s largest student science fairs.
Philosophy in Pop Culture (Taylor’s Version)
One of the reasons that Taylor Swift resonates with so many people is that they identify with themes and questions that she sings about (love, revenge, trust, authentic life, power, free will, etc). These same topics and questions raise social, cultural, and ethical issues that have long been of central concern to philosophers. Follow us on Instagram @ucphilosophytv.
Intersections of Outreach & Academia
Philosophy is a way of thinking about certain topics such as moral responsibility, meaning in life, personal values, and reasons. It is an activity in which people try to figure out truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and each other. Public philosophy is a new subfield of philosophy that involves engagement with the public around various philosophical topics and cultivating philosophical critical thinking and perspective-taking skills in the public.
I examine different ways in which philosophy can engage the public. The goal of my efforts is to provide a model for how publicly-oriented scholarship and community-engaged work can be valuable for its own sake, support academic research, as well as be valuable academic work in itself. Focal questions include: How do we use philosophy topics to engage the public? How do we use public interest to explore philosophy? How do we best translate philosophical methodology and skills into public spaces? How does academic public engagement differ depending on the subject matter? What are the benefits of such engagement from both the perspective of academics and from the public?