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About MeI am an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. I specialise in the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and I have interests in 20th Century European philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy. I received my PhD from The University of Chicago and my undergraduate degrees from The University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. I hail from Red Beach (pictured), Whangaparaoa, in Aotearoa New Zealand.
My research centres on Heidegger’s conception of the human being as open to meaning and subject to breakdowns of meaning. I focus on the ways in which human beings are immersed in meaningful contexts, open to things that matter, and radically dependent on entities in the world for carrying out their projects. As a result of this dependence, we are vulnerable to having our lives disrupted by things that are not up to us, and we are constantly at risk of coming into a crisis of meaning, such as an existential crisis. This is nowhere more apparent than in the current climate catastrophe, which reveals our profound situatedness in and on the Earth, to which we belong in ways that the Western philosophical tradition has yet to fully conceptualise. Heidegger’s philosophy pushes back against some of the blind spots of that tradition and offers powerful tools for thinking through our situatedness and vulnerability. My work seeks to identify, develop, and apply those tools. When I am not philosophising, I volunteer for City Dogs and City Kitties Rescue as a cat foster assistant and on the cat behaviour team. |