About

I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. At Upstate, I teach medical students and residents in the Department of Medicine, as well as students, interns, and residents in the Department of Psychiatry. I am also a member of Upstate’s CP3: The Center for Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry as well as the Hospital Ethics Consult Service.

My work is in philosophy of science/medicine/psychiatry, philosophy of mind/cognitive science, bioethics and  the epistemic and ethical issues surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence in medicine. Currently I am working on a manuscript, Reclaiming the Self in Psychiatry: Centering Personal Narratives for a Humanist Science (under contract with Routledge), in which I make a case for including the self as an explicit target of research in scientific psychiatry in order to develop humanistic care practices in the clinic and beyond — practices that help persons with mental disorders flourish. Research in cognitive science and first-person narratives are central to this work. 

My co-edited book (2021), The Handbook of Psychotherapy Ethics was published by the Oxford University Press, with an international group of psychologists, philosophers, and psychiatrists. It offers a thorough analysis of the pressing ethical issues that emerge in an increasingly multicultural, diverse, divergent, and digital space of psychotherapy.  

I also co-edited (2019) The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Psychiatry, with Robyn Bluhm, which is intended to serve as a textbook in philosophy of psychiatry, offering an introduction to philosophy of psychiatry by mapping it on to the traditional areas of philosophy. You can find a review of it here. A paperback copy was published in 2022.

Another co-edited book (2017), Extraordinary Science and Psychiatry: Responses to the Crisis in Mental Health Research, with Jeffrey Poland,  adopts a Kuhnian approach to make sense of the existing research landscape in psychiatry. Some reviews can be found here and here.

I am an Area Editor for Ergo, and serve on the Editorial Board of Philosophy of Medicine; Studies in History and Philosophy of Science; and Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology. I also serve on the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry.

My work has been recognized by several awards. I was the winner of the Book Manuscript Workshop Award from Ann Johnson Institute (AJI) for Science, Technology, and Society, University of South Carolina, SC. The award is given to a scholar who has a first-time book monograph near completion. It allowed me to invite, and the AJI to fund three senior experts in my field for a one-day workshop. I received the President’s Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in Research Achievement, UTSA (Tenured Category) which “recognizes, encourages and rewards faculty who have conducted a sustained program of high-quality, high-impact research that has translated into national and international recognition and has made a substantial contribution to the faculty member’s field.” I also received the  Stumberg Researcher of the Year Award, UTSA (Tenured Category), which recognizes the most research active tenured faculty in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at UTSA. I have also been the  recipient of UTSA’s Lutcher Brown Fellowship which is awarded to select newly tenured faculty who have demonstrated an outstanding record of excellence in their scholarly activities and commitment to student success. 

I have interests in philosophy of space and space exploration and taught a course –“the first university philosophy course taught fully in the metaverse“– on Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE) with my colleague Chris Packham. Here is a nice review of the course in San Antonio Express News.

I am a faculty partner at the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice in Health and Social Care at St. Catherine’s College at the University of Oxford. I am also an honorary research fellow at the Center for Olfactory Research and Applications at the Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, and an Associate Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at University of Pittsburgh. Prior to Upstate, I was an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) at the Department of Philosophy and Classics, and the Director of the Medical Humanities Program at UTSA. I received my PhD in 2010 at York University, Canada and have held postdoctoral fellowships at Dalhouise University in Canada, and at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.