Department of Philosophy | San Francisco State University
Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at San Francisco State University. Previously, I was a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park. I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Arizona, and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, where I did my undergraduate studies in Philosophy, Musicology, and the Classical Languages.
My research focuses on the history of ethics and political philosophy, primarily in Greek & Roman philosophy, and in contemporary virtue ethics. On the political side, I am interested in the development of constitutionalism, democratic theory, and the use of moral psychology and theories of character in political philosophy, particularly in non-ideal circumstances. On the ethical side, I have worked most on ancient theories of love, sex, and friendship. As somebody who is not yet a Sage, I am also interested more generally in how to progress towards virtue and what it means to have lower grades of virtue. I am at my happiest working on Plato and the Stoics (who are both fun and probably right), though I also have major research and teaching interests in Aristotle and Cicero. My current research centers around getting really clear about the constitution detailed in Plato's Laws, and its theoretical significance. I am also working on Elizabeth Anscombe's unpublished manuscripts. |