Teaching

Professional Teaching Qualifications

  • Since June 2020, I’ve been an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).

Courses

Propaganda and Democracy: Hartwick College, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
  • Topics include historical criticisms of various governmental systems (e.g., those of Plato, Aristotle, and Rousseau); the nature of political idealogy and demagoguery; the nature and history of propaganda; Free speech; Contemporary examples of propaganda as it relates to, e.g., eating meat, feminism, Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives.
Philosophy of Forensic Science: Hartwick College, Spring 2023, Fall 2023
  • Topics include the relationship between identity and criminal/victim identification, the nature of evidence and the methods of science, epistemological issues regarding crime-solving technology, ethical obligations owed to victims, the conduct of forensic professionals, hauntology and ghost criminology, and some ethical concerns regarding the handling of evidence.
  • Cross-listed: Criminal Justice

Death in Medical Ethics: Hartwick College, Spring 2023

  • Topics discussed included identity and medical definitions of death, death and well-being, Advanced Directives, and Euthanasia.
  • Designed as a nursing student’s directed study.
My Body, My Choice: Hartwick College, Spring 2023
  • Topics included the nature of personal autonomy, personal autonomy and existentialism, and personal autonomy and ethical debates (especially in medicine) such as cosmetic surgery, cosmetic psychopharmacology, euthanasia, abortion, patient refusal of life-sustaining treatment, etc.
  • Designed as a nursing student’s directed study.
Science vs. Religion in Modern Philosophical Thought: Hartwick College, Spring 2022, 2023
  • Topics included Descartes’ mechanistic philosophy (esp. as it pertains to biology); discourse concerning non-human animal minds (esp. those of Descartes, Cavendish, Hume, and La Mettrie); Locke’s human/person distinction and how it relates to contemporary discussions regarding animalism, biology, and medicine; Hume’s accounts of the argument from design; Hume and Buddhism; Hume and Darwin; Leibniz’ Monadology and biology.
Telling Right from Wrong: Hamilton College, Autumn 2022
  • Topics of discussion include utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, the nature of consent, sex work, eating meat, bestiality, death, euthanasia, abortion, and procreation.
Bioethics: Hartwick College, Autumn 2021, 2022
  • Topics of discussion include paternalism and autonomy, physicians’ obligations, the role of nurses, confidentiality, intersex and amputations, cosmetic surgery, research ethics, animal research, definitions of death, euthanasia, human cloning, genetic enhancement, anti-natalism, justice and healthcare.
  • Satisfies the Nursing program’s normativity requirement.
Happiness: Hartwick College, Autumn 2021, 2022
  • Topics include happiness as pleasure, satisfaction, achievement, happiness and virtue, the separation of happiness and morality, happiness and immorality, the impossibility of happiness, happiness and existence/non-existence, and happiness and the absurd.
  • Satisfies the Nursing program’s normativity requirement.

As a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant/Postgraduate Tutor

Knowledge, Self and Reality (Helen Steward): University of Leeds, Spring 2021
  • Introductory epistemology and metaphysics module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included scepticism, other minds, epistemic injustice, personal identity (including animalism), Buddhism and the no-self view, free will, the metaphysics of everyday objects, and the metaphysics of race and gender.
  • Taught online.
The Good, the Bad, the Right, the Wrong (Daniel Elstein): University of Leeds, Spring 2021
  • Introductory ethics module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included utilitarianism, deontology, moral relativism, social justice, free speech, and the ethics of eating animals.
  • Taught online.
The Mind (Léa Salje): University of Leeds, Spring 2021
  • Introductory philosophy of mind module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included the mind-body problem, behaviourism, identity theory, functionalism, eliminativism, consciousness, and panpsychism.
  • Taught online.
How to Think Clearly and Argue Well (John Divers): University of Leeds, Autumn 2020
  • Introduction to logic and reasoning module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. Topics discussed included validity and soundness; justification, evidence, and probability; and fallacies.
  • Taught online.
Moral Philosophy (Jessica Isserow): University of Leeds, Autumn 2020
  • A Second-year ethics module in which I led several tutorials of about 10-15 students each. I was also responsible for recording an online lecture on the ethics of death. Topics discussed included well-being, value, death, duties to future people, partiality, collective harm, consent, and supererogation.
  • Taught online.
Defining Death: What is human death? When does it occur? What ethical difference does it make? – University of Leeds, Autumn 2019
  • A third-year ethics project as part of the School of Medicine’s Year 3 Campus to Clinic. I led discussions for two separate groups of about 5 students each. Topics discussed included somatic, whole-brain, and higher-brain definitions of death and death as a process.
  • Personally curated topics and readings.
Medical Ethics (Georgia Testa) – University of Leeds, Autumn 2019 semester, Autumn 2020
  • I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. Topics discussed included capacity and autonomy, valid consent, truth-telling and withholding information, and confidentiality.
  • Part of the School of Medicine’s Year 1 Campus to Clinic program.
  • Autumn 2020 tutorials were taught online.
Knowledge, Self and Reality (Robin Le Poidevin) – University of Leeds, Spring 2019
  • Introductory epistemology and metaphysics module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included scepticism, truth, the problem of other minds, the possibility of change, time and persistence, and the self.
The Structure of Reality (Steven French) – University of Leeds, Autumn 2018
  • A third-year metaphysics module in which I led several tutorials of about 5 students each. Topics discussed included various conceptions of what imposes a structure on what exists (e.g. laws, causality, space, and time.)
Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (Scott Shalkowski) – University of Leeds, Autumn 2018
  • Introductory philosophy of religion module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed include the Kalām cosmological argument, the problem of evil, atheism, agnosticism, and non-classical conceptions of God.
How Science Works (Ellen Clarke) – University of Leeds, Spring 2018
  • Introductory philosophy of science module in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included scientific realism, induction, testability, sociality and values in science, and reductionism.
Great Philosophical Thinkers (Nick Jones) – University of Leeds, Autumn 2017
  • I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each in the general introductory module. I was also responsible for marking student essays. Topics discussed included Plato’s Meno, René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, and John Locke’s “Of Identity and Diversity” (from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.)
Introduction to Ethics (Lara Giordano) – University of Kansas, Autumn 2015 – Spring 2016
  • Introductory ethics course in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays and exams as well as monitoring the students during examinations. Topics discussed included Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology, ethics of care, abortion, hedonism, ethical egoism, divine command theory, and moral relativism.
Introduction to Philosophy (Sarah Robins) – University of Kansas, Autumn 2014 – Spring 2015
  • A general introductory course in which I led several tutorials of about 15-20 students each. I was also responsible for marking student essays and exams as well as monitoring the students during examinations. Topics discussed included personal identity, theories of knowledge, philosophy of mind and cognition, scientific reasoning, and artificial intelligence.

Miscellaneous

Tutor for the Kansas Athletics Tutoring Program: University of Kansas, Autumn 2015 – Spring 2016
  • Tutored student-athletes in a variety of writing-intensive subjects including Introduction to Ethics, English Composition, Ethics in Sports, Introduction to Philosophy, and Philosophical Communications.