I am a doctoral candidate in philosophy at UW Seattle. I work in the philosophy of science, mainly grappling with questions about the social nature of scientific practice. This involves drawing on a variety of sources - including feminist philosophy of science, sociology, and history of science - to get a clearer picture of the social and cultural institutions that help make up the scientific enterprise, as well as the implications these insights have for our understanding of science and its relationship to society.

My dissertation examines the subtle and complex ethical relationships that emerge in “citizen science” – when scientists draw on the labor and resources of non-scientists for the production of scientific knowledge. I argue that traditional philosophical tools are inadequate to capture important ethical features in cases like the voluntary collection of water samples by residents of Flint, MI for researchers at Virginia Tech. These tools cannot account for the way the stakes of these relationships vary for contributors and are locally contingent. My dissertation develops a flexible analytic framework for determining the responsibilities of Science to the non-scientific individuals and communities it engages, giving special attention to how the specific interests of non-scientists change the ethical dimensions of these collaborative relationships.

My work has been presented at Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice 2013 (Toronto, Ontario) and the European Philosophy of Science Association 2013 (Helsinki, Finland), and (as a co-author) at the 40th anniversary meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science 2015 in Denver, Colorado.

I have taught a wide variety of courses; including Symbolic Logic, Intro to Philosophy, Contemporary Moral Problems, Intro to Ethics, Intro to Philosophy of Science, Medical Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion. In 2013 I was awarded the Department of Philosophy's Excellence in Teaching Award and in 2016  I was awarded the University of Washington's Excellence in Teaching Award - a competetive award for all the graduate student instructors across campus as a whole.

It is also my privilege to serve as the Department of Philosophy's Teaching and Learning Coordinator for the 2015-2016 academic year. This involves leading two seminars on teaching for the incoming graduate student cohort, serving as the director for the UW Philosophy Writing Center, as well as leading several workshops on teaching philosophy for the department as a whole.