See our former fellows here.
Director
Sergio Tenenbaum
Sergio Tenenbaum is the Director of the Centre for Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem in the Fall of 2011, Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University in the Spring of 2012, Visiting Professor at Université Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) March 2016, and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in the August 2019. He is the author of Appearances of the Good (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Ratonal Powers in Action (Oxford 2021) as well as the editor of Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good (Oxford University Press, 2010), Moral Psychology (Rodopi, 2007), and co-editor (together with Chrisoula Andreou) of Belief, Action, and Rationality over Time (Routledge 2016).
Race, Ethics, and Power Program Director
William Paris
William Paris is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is also an Associate Editor for the journal Critical Philosophy of Race. His research focuses on History of African American philosophy, 20th century continental philosophy, and political philosophy. He has published on Frantz Fanon and Gender, Sylvia Wynter’s phenomenology of imagination, and C.L.R. James and Hannah Arendt. He is also at work on his book manuscript Racial Justice and Forms of Life: Towards a Critical Theory of Utopia (under contract with Oxford University Press) that aims to provide a novel theory of racial justice that focuses on the imperative of collective control over our shared social time in a new form of life and the transformation of our conceptions of rights.
Centre Administrator
Ellen Ough
Events & Communications Assistant
Alice Thomas
Visiting Faculty Fellows
David Benatar, Philosophy, University of Cape Town
David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He has been a visiting fellow at Emory (2004), Princeton (2009-2010), the US National Institutes of Health (2014-2015), and the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western University (2022-2023). His books include Better Never to Have Been (Oxford, 2006), The Second Sexism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), The Human Predicament (Oxford, 2017), and Very Practical Ethics (Oxford, 2024).
Kiran Banerjee, Political Science, Dalhousie University
Kiran Banerjee is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair of Forced Migration and Refugee Policy at Dalhousie University. His research addresses global migration governance, focusing on international institutions and domestic political actors in responding to forced displacement. Banerjee’s broader research interests include international ethics, global governance, international relations theory, and migration studies, as well as legal theory. Before joining the Department of Political Science, Banerjee was a faculty member in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Global Policy Initiative and School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
Kiran Banerjee est professeure agrégée et titulaire de la chaire de recherche du Canada en migration forcée et politique sur les réfugiés à l’Université Dalhousie. Les recherches de Banerjee portent sur la gouvernance mondiale des migrations, en particulier sur les institutions internationales et les acteurs politiques nationaux qui réagissent aux déplacements forcés. Les domaines de recherche plus vastes de Banerjee comprennent l’éthique internationale, la gouvernance mondiale, la théorie des relations internationales et les études sur les migrations, ainsi que la théorie juridique. Avant de se joindre au Département de science politique, Banerjee était membre du corps professoral du Département d’études politiques de l’Université de la Saskatchewan et chercheure postdoctorale du CRSH (SSHRC) à la Global Policy Initiative et à la School of International and Public Affairs de l’Université Columbia.
See our Faculty Associates here.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Martina Favaretto, PhD, Indiana University Bloomington
Martina is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Ethics. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Indiana University Bloomington. Her dissertation focused on what it is to act rationally in the context of Kant’s ethics and how, according to Kant, emotions can contribute positively or negatively to rational agency. Martina’s current research explores the extent to which Kant’s theory can be useful for guiding the way in which we should think about contemporary ethical issues. In particular, she is interested in figuring out the role emotions should play in social and political contexts, as well as in the context of biomedical ethics and ethics of AI. Before getting her PhD from Indiana University, Martina received her BA and MA from the University of Pavia in Italy.
Larisa Svirsky, PhD, UNC-Chapel Hill
Larisa’s research is primarily in moral psychology and bioethics and she received her PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill. In a recent series of papers, she develops a relational view of responsibility motivated by how we hold children, people with mental illness, addiction, and cognitive disability responsible in ordinary life. She was previously a Lecturer in the Brandeis University Philosophy Department as well as a Postdoctoral Scholar at The Ohio State University College of Public Health/the Center for Bioethics at OSU Medical Center. Her research at OSU was part of an interdisciplinary project called Regulating Addiction: Paternalism, Stigma, and Health Disparities, and focused on the ethics of harm reduction, e-cigarette regulation, and the use of opioid treatment agreements. She is currently working on a book project offering a perceptual account of responsibility, forgiveness, and recovery after traumatic wrongdoing.
Returning Fellows
Faisal Bhabha (Doctoral Fellow)
Faisal is a JD/PhD student in the Department of Philosophy. His main research interests are in legal, moral and political philosophy. He has special interests in Kant’s practical philosophy and aesthetics. His dissertation project defends a Kantian account of parental authority. Faisal runs an annual workshop called the Yale-Toronto Private Law Theory Discussion Group.
Caitlin Hamblin-Yule (Doctoral Fellow and REP Fellow)
Caitlin Hamblin-Yule is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her primary research interests lie in intersubjectivity. In particular, she is interested in the concept of moral personhood, who it applies to, and how it is applied. Her dissertation focuses on these questions as they appear in Kant’s system. More specifically, the dissertation concerns how the concept ‘person’, an idea of practical reason, can be applied to objects given in experience.
She is also interested in German Idealism more widely, Africana social and political philosophy & philosophy of race.
Yukiko Kobayashi Lui (Doctoral Fellow)
Yukiko is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Law. Her research interests are in critical legal theories and political theory as applied to the study of family, intimate and collective life. Her doctoral project is about the justifications for non-conjugal relationship recognition and the connection between law, unwaged care work and social assistance in Canada and the United States.
Miko Zeldes-Roth (Doctoral Fellow and REP Fellow)
Miko Zeldes-Roth is a PhD student in political theory at the University of Toronto. His doctoral research centers on the relationship between race, nationality, and theories of political judgement in the United States through the lens of postwar continental theory. Miko is particularly interested in the contemporary relationship between white supremacy and notions of citizenship and belonging in the US. He also has secondary research interests in Jewish politics and binationalism in Israel/Palestine. Miko holds a BA in Political Science from Carleton College in Minnesota and received his MA from the University of Chicago.
Doctoral Fellows
Emily Baron (Doctoral Fellow)
Emily is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy. Her research primarily focuses on mental disorder and assessments of moral and legal responsibility.
Emily was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2022. Before returning to her PhD, she worked as a lawyer in private practice with a focus in health and mental health law. Emily holds a JD from the University of Toronto, an MA in philosophy from Western University, and a BA (hons.) in psychology from the University of Manitoba.
Zachary Hollander (REP Fellow)
Zach Hollander is a PhD student in political theory at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on 20th century critical and continental theory, utopianism, and social movements. His dissertation intends to articulate both the necessity of a critical hope for politics and how hope can be derived from social movement practices that create space for imagining and enacting different worlds. He is also interested in Black political thought and urban theory. Zach holds a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from George Washington University and two MScs in Comparative Social Policy and Critical Environmental Studies from the University of Oxford.
Stefan Macleod (Doctoral Fellow)
Stefan is a doctoral candidate in the department of political science. His research is in normative political theory, with a particular focus on global distributive justice and the global financial system. His dissertation provides a critical reinterpretation of the social and political significance of money in order to marshal a normative diagnosis of the global financial system and the distributional implications of the hegemony of the US dollar. The dissertation is part of a broader project in political theory to understand the relationship between social theoretic models of economic activity and normative ideals of global justice. Prior to his doctoral studies at UofT, Stefan completed a joint BA in philosophy and political science at McGill University (2017) and a MA in philosophy from Queen’s University (2018).
Mynt Marsellus (REP Fellow)
Mynt is PhD candidate at the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Their dissertation project argues for a new approach to authorship in cinema studies by staging an encounter between recent work in film philosophy, particularly concerning the works of Stanley Cavell, and classical auteurist writings.
Tim Mckee (Doctoral Fellow)
Tim McKee is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy. His main area of research is moral psychology, especially as it relates to personal identity. His dissertation is on narrative approaches to the self, in particular whether understanding your life narratively is consistent with taking an agential stance toward your character and actions. Currently he’s working on narrative and social media – whether the self-conceptions fostered by social media reflect a plausible ideal of narrativity. Beyond his dissertation, Tim is also interested in Ancient Greek ethics, philosophy in the Mahābhārata, and existentialism. The topics that engage him the most are moral motivation, mental conflict, habituation, selfhood, trust, and friendship.
Tina Ta (Doctoral Fellow)
Tina Ta is a PhD candidate in the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). Prior to graduate studies, Tina has taught in both elementary and secondary school settings in Ontario, British Columbia, and England. She brings together her background in philosophy and experience in teaching to conduct empirical research in educational ethics, aiming both to amplify teachers’ voices on ethical dilemmas in teaching and to develop concrete resources to support educators in their ethical decision-making. Tina’s dissertation explores the ethical implications of Ontario Gr. 1–8 Language Arts policy in practice with a particular focus on teacher decision-making.
Undergraduate Fellows
Jithvan Ariyaratne (Undergraduate Fellow)
Jithvan is a fourth-year student double majoring in Ethics, Society, & Law and Political Science, with a minor in Canadian Studies. His research interests include the influence of ethical considerations on political and legal decision-making, the moral bounds of national security policy in Canada and abroad, as well as the study of Canadian politics and culture more generally. Outside the classroom, Jithvan volunteers as an elections officer for the Trinity College Meeting and is an avid sports fan who can often be found cheering on the Toronto Maple Leafs and Canadian national soccer teams.
Anya Berube Boutin (Undergraduate Fellow)
Anya is a 4th-year student, majoring in Ethics, Society, and Law with a double minor in Philosophy and Psychology. Her primary philosophical interests include ethics (broadly defined), metaethics, and topics in philosophy of mind such as free will and intentionality. She is also interested in the intersection between moral philosophy and moral psychology, particularly as it relates to understanding moral judgment and attributions of responsibility, and how these can inform our engagement with legal and penal institutions. She has conducted research regarding moral issues such as the ethics of pornography in the increasingly digital age and continues to be very interested in how technological advancements change discourse around contemporary moral issues.
Summer Chan (REP Fellow)
Summer is a fourth-year student, specializing in Philosophy and majoring in Criminology. Her areas of interest largely centre around critical social theory, theories of social mobilization, and theories of justice. She particularly enjoys exploring the relationship between law and revolution and the role of criminal-legal systems in a post-capitalist society. Her research focuses on developing a theory for sustainable movement building and, in her spare time, she can be found wandering the halls of UC.
Glenda Fu (Undergraduate Fellow)
Glenda is a fourth-year undergraduate with a Philosophy and English double major and Psychology minor. She is interested in metaethics and the intersection between Ethics and Psychology. Primarily, how psychology clarifies subjectivity in the human agent, which frequently complicates our “objective” rendering of moral principles. Her other interests include Taoism, 20th century continental philosophy, and metaphysics. She works for the Ethics Bowl Canada non-profit and will be part of the 2024-25 Socrates Project . Outside of philosophy, Glenda is a published poet, writer, and lover of world travel.
Abha Roy Simpson (Undergraduate Fellow)
Abha is a fourth-year student majoring in Sociology and minoring in Philosophy, and Literature and Critical Theory. She is interested in the philosophy of race and gender and their intersections with ethics. As an undergrad student, she has focused on the ways racism manifests in the university and has done research looking at racialized students’ feelings regarding the racialized authors read in class. In her free time, Abha enjoys spending an absurdly long time in coffee shops with her friends.
Visiting Research Associate
Ella Street
Ella Street is a Visiting Research Associate in the Centre for Ethics. Her research is concerned with democratic judgment, popular participation, political identity and theatrical politics in the history of political thought and practice. Her first book project, When Citizens Judge, compares how citizens judged as leisured spectators in the theater and as jurors in the popular courts of 5th and 4th century democratic Athens. A new project, Actors on the Political Stage, develops a genealogy of theater metaphors in political thought and practice—from ancient Athens to Puritan New England—to illuminate contemporary “post-truth” and performative politics. Her work has appeared in the Review of Politics and the Tocqueville Review.
Ella earned her B.A. in Political Science from Colorado College, M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. From 2021-2023, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Government at Cornell University.
Visiting Faculty Associates
Allison Weir
Allison Weir is a social and political philosopher who researches and writes about critical theories of freedom, identity, and power, feminisms and gender, decolonization, and global care chains. She is currently a Visiting Faculty Associate at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Centre for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She co-founded the Institute for Social Justice in Sydney, Australia, where she was Research Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program in Social Political Thought, and before that was Professor of Philosophy and Gender Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her book, Decolonizing Freedom, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is the author of Identities and Freedom (Oxford) and Sacrificial Logics: Feminist Theory and the Critique of Identity (Routledge).Contact: allisone.weir@utoronto.ca
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis is an interdisciplinary philosopher and critical theorist whose wide-ranging publications and research are focused on rethinking the relation between the human and non-human; revising the theory and practice of critique in light of diverse traditions of critical theory; re-assessing the claims and possibilities of philosophical romanticism; and illuminating the ethical and political insights of the arts, especially literature, cinema, and music. He is the author of Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory Between Past and Future (MIT), Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge), The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (Bloomsbury), and over 60 articles and book chapters that have appeared in a broad array of philosophy, political theory, and humanities journals (New Literary History, Political Theory, Angelaki, European Journal of Political Theory, British Journal for the History of Philosophy) and notable academic presses (Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, Columbia, Routledge, among others). He has taught at universities in Canada, the UK, and Australia, most recently as Foundation Director and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Justice in Sydney. Now in the “post-institutional” phase of his career, he is currently a Fellow of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt University Berlin and a Visiting Faculty Associate at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.
Work-Study Students
Kate Wong
Kate is a fourth-year undergrad student double majoring in Arts Management and New Media Studies at UTSC. She is interested in arts and media and its intersection with ethics, specifically ethical considerations in art, design, and emerging technologies. Outside of her academics, Kate enjoys travelling and exploring new coffee shops around the city.
Tien Yang
Tien is a fourth-year undergraduate student, pursuing a degree in Psychology Research Specialist and Anthropology Minor. Her research interest lies in understanding the dynamics of memory and learning across the human lifespan, with a specific focus on development and aging. Tien has been funded by the University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA) several times to work on various projects on human memory and learning. This year, while completing an Honours Thesis on the cognitive neuroscience of aging, Tien will undertake a new project that investigates the perceptions of ageism.