Research
Research
MA Thesis - Under the Direction of Christie Hartley (chair), S.M. Love, and Andrew I. Cohen.
Currently, my work centers around questions of authority in social movements. In my MA thesis, I argue for the rejection of a widespread assumption in social justice literature: that allies require authorization from the oppressed groups they seek to support due to a supposed lack of epistemic authority to understand others’ oppression. I call this the Authorization Thesis. Drawing on Lidal Dror (2023) and Emily Tilton (2024), I argue that lived experience of oppression is neither necessary nor sufficient for the determination of one’s epistemic authority, and, so, authorization is similarly neither necessary nor sufficient for one’s allyship. Instead, I develop a Political Commitment Account of Allyship. On my account, what determines one’s epistemic authority is the achievement of a standpoint on oppression, and what constitutes one’s allyship is the demonstration of a principled commitment to advancing justice by achieving and acting on that standpoint, regardless of group membership and/or authorization.
Peer-reviewed presentations
“A Defense of Allyship as a Political Commitment”
APA Eastern Meeting, Baltimore, MD, USA, January 2026
WOGAP 25th Anniversary Conference, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, June 2025
Arizona Feminist Philosophy Graduate Conference, Arizona, USA, February 2025
“Genderqueers, Activists, and Other Critical Gender Kinds”
APA Central Division Meeting (virtual), February 2025
“Philosophy in the Public Turmoil”
APA Pacific Division Meeting, Public Philosophy Network, Oregon, USA, March 2024
Michigan State University Graduate Philosophy Conference, Michigan, USA, March 2024
Georgia Philosophical Society Conference, Georgia, USA, October 2023
“Philosophy as a Profession and as a Duty”
Philosophy Across Disciplines Conference, Newcastle University (virtual), June 2021
4th Panhellenic Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, Athens, Greece, April 2021
“The Ethics of Suicide”
3rd Panhellenic Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, Athens, Greece, April 2019