News

Congratulations to Lauren Willson, who successfully defended her dissertation, "Autonomy and External Constraint."

Congratulations to Eric Sievers, who successfully defended his dissertation, "Conceptual Jurisprudence: Engineering Legal Concepts."

Matthew Jernberg successfully defended his dissertation, "How Death Harms Us: A Defense of Fear," on November 3rd. Matthew's committee was chaired by Mark LeBar.

His paper, "Swinging Swords, Casting Spells, Killing Gods: On Intentions for Virtual Actions," won the prize for best graduate student essay at the 2025 meeting of the Mississippi Philosophical Association.

The Emotion and Society Lab, based at the University of California-Riverside, is a network of scholars at various universities who engage in collaborative learning, research, and public engagement regarding emotions and society. Fellows attend an in-person workshop and participate in monthly virtual sessions on works in progress. Renee joins the 2025-26 cohort of Fellows in the program.

A recent peer-reviewed article reports results indicating that philosophy majors outperform other majors on various measures of reasoning and intellectual virtues, even adjusting for differences prior to college studies.

Large Language Models, widely used by AI-powered chatbots, tend to overuse certain words, such as ‘delve’, ‘intricate’, and ‘realm’. A recent opinion piece in the Washington Post discusses the work of Assistant Professor of Philosophy Zina Ward, in collaboration with Tom Juzek, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, explaining the overuse.

Link to publication inside.

Dylan Masterson successfully defended his Master's thesis, "The Mythical Aspect of Ideology: Understanding Gender Myths," on March 24th. Dylan's committee was chaired by Andrea Westlund.

Matthew will be a Fellow in the Philosophy in Media Workshop on Podcasting and Production this summer. He is host of the podcast, “Mortality Matters: Meaning and Death.” Matthew is writing a dissertation entitled, “Why We Should Fear Death.”