Sosseh Assaturian (she/her)

Sosseh Assaturian is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. Sosseh’s area of specialization is Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, especially philosophy of language, metaphysics, and logic, with a focus on the Stoics. She is particularly interested in the Stoic theory of lekta, the development of theories of language, grammar, reference, and meaning in antiquity, and applications of ancient semantic theory in contemporary philosophy of language.

Currently, she is working on a monograph that reconstructs a novel account of the structure and metaphysics of Stoic propositions, informed by their role in Stoic logic and philosophy of mind. Her other projects centre on Stoic theories of reference and assertion. 

While her research primarily concerns Hellenistic philosophy, she has also published on metaphysics, science, and inquiry in the Eleatics and Plato, and has interests in the historiography of philosophy, including issues related to canon formation, as well as the role of contemporary philosophical machinery and ideological lenses in interpreting ancient texts. Outside of ancient philosophy, she has broad interests in 20th century analytic philosophy and contemporary work at the intersection of philosophy of language and metaphysics. Her public-facing work has been published in venues such as Ancient History magazine. 

Prior to joining the University of Washington, Sosseh was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a doctoral student in the Joint Program for Ancient Philosophy. Her dissertation, The Stoics on Language and Reality, reconstructed a new picture of how the Stoics conceptualize the relation between language and the world, as mediated by lekta.