Graduate Students

Duygu Aktas received a B.A. in philosophy from Istanbul University, and an M.A. in philosophy from Bogazici University. She is primarily interested in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. She is also interested in political philosophy.      

Email: duyguaktas@miami.edu or duyguuaktass@gmail.com

Abdullah Al-Othman received his B.A. in Philosophy from Kuwait University and his M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Miami. His main interests are in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind.

Yukun Chen received his B.A. in Philosophy from East China Normal University and was an exchange student at University of Connecticut, Storrs. His primary area of interest lies in the Philosophy of Perception (especially in the Moral Perception), with secondary interests in the Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, and Cognitive Science. He is currently developing a theory of Moral Perception.

Nick Cisneros is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Miami. Nick earned his B.A. in both philosophy and psychology from the University of West Florida (2014) and his M.A. in philosophy from Florida State University (2019). His primary research interests center around ethical veganism, especially arguments for and against it and analyses of what it amounts to. Methodologically speaking, Nick is interested in squaring claims made by vegans who aren’t philosophers with claims made by vegans who are philosophers and solid philosophical argumentation and theory. His secondary research interests involve questions in applied ethics more generally and questions in ontology and metaontology.

Email:  ncisneros@miami.edu

Qian He received her B.A. from Peking University, and MLitt from the University of St. Andrews and Stirling Joint Program. Primary interests are in epistemology and philosophy of mind. has a second interest in decision theory, especially in the treatment of transformative experiences, uncertainty, risks, and regret attitudes.

Dan Hoogerhyde received a B.A. in Philosophy from The College of New Jersey and an M.S. in Philosophy from Florida State University. His primary interests are in value theory, well-being, consequentialism, and applied ethics.  

Wali Hussaini received his BSc (Hons) in Political Science from the Lahore University of Management Sciences and his MA in Philosophy from Durham University. His primary interests are metaethics, political philosophy, and value theory (broadly construed). He is working to develop a pragmatist metaethics – inspired particularly by the work of C.S. Peirce – which can potentially resolve some fundamental issues in moral philosophy. He hopes to build upon this work in the future towards a pragmatist political philosophy. His philosophical interests also include the history of philosophy (especially ancient, 18^th and 19^th century), environmental ethics, and metaphysics.

Email: sxh1230@miami.edu

Yeun Kim received an MA in Philosophy from Yonsei University. His interests are in philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. 

Email:  yxk275@miami.edu

Kenji Lota holds degrees in nursing, anthropology, and philosophy. He received his MA in Philosophy from Concordia University in Montreal. His main interests lie in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of action. He is particularly interested in inquiry. He is concerned with the underlying reasons for how and why we ask certain questions and how those questions get settled. 

Luis Enrique Martinez Barboza received his B.A. in Philosophy from University of Florida and his M.A. in Philosophy from University of Miami. His main interests are Ethics of Technology and Artificial Intelligence, and Philosophy of Mind.

Rachel Meyer received her B.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, her M.A. in Liberal Studies from University of Miami, and her Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University.  Her main interests are in ethics, particularly animal ethics, philosophy of religion, and pragmatism. She has a special fondness for existentialism.

Email: crm225@miami.edu

Jon Odito is interested in Ethics, Ontology and the Philosophy of Mind. In particular, he is interested in the ethical dimensions of maturity: he is interested in studying maturity, not just as a developmental phenomenon, as they do in humanistic psychology, but also as a moral phenomenon, in particular, as a distinct virtue, just like the cardinal, canonical virtues of Justice and Temperance and Courage.

Email: johnodito@gmail.com
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/johnodito/home

Hwan Ryu received his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from Seoul National University. His interests are in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mathematics.

Email:  hwan.ryu@miami.edu

Kate Villa received her BA in philosophy from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and her MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her primary interests include ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of emotions.

Website: www.katevilla.info

Matthew Watts works in memory, mind, cognitive science, and (increasingly) technology, but he has broad philosophical interests ranging across the philosophical spectrum. Before graduate school, he received a B.S. in Philosophy from Portland State University. Prior to that he was a Certified Pipefitter/Welder and worked vineyard maintenance at the Hood's Wind Vineyard in Hood River, Oregon. 

Gedalyahu Wittow aka Ged received his BA in Humanities from the Open University of Israel and an MA in Cognitive Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Main interests are in core philosophy topics, such as free will and agency, knowledge and truth, phil mind and metaphysics broadly construed. I hold a 

Personal bio: I grew up in a Yiddish speaking ultra-orthodox community in Jerusalem and studied Talmud and a variety of other Jewish topics in some of the well renowned Yeshivot in Israel. My untraditional entry to academia and interest in philosophy has been an opportunity to see issues such as truth, religion and meaning from a bridging perspective that I hope will encourage more dialog, communication, and better philosophy for more of us.