Multicultural Philosophy Conference Participant Bios
Mohammad Azadpur
Associate Professor of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
Webpage: http://online.sfsu.edu/~azad
Mohammad Azadpur received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1999. He was then awarded a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Research on Culture and Literature of the Johns Hopkins University. His doctoral work focused on metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of Modern philosophy, defending, in his dissertation, a form of critical realism inspired by the philosophies of Kant, Wittgenstein, and John McDowell. In his post-doctoral work, he concentrated on Islamic philosophical metaphysics and epistemology, but he was soon drawn to Islamic philosophical ethics, which he found to be integral (and foundational) to the pursuit of the more theoretical aspects of Islamic philosophy. Currently, he is an associate professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, where he teaches Islamic philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics as well as seminars on early Heidegger, later Foucault, and "Analytic Hegelians." His publications include 'Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? Philosophy, Morality, & the Persians' in New Nietzsche Studies (1999), 'The Sublime Visions of Philosophy: Fundamental Ontology and the Imaginal World' in Microcosm and Macrocosm: A Dialogue between Phenomenology and Islamic Philosophy (2005), and 'Hegel and the Divinity of Light in Islamic Phenomenology and Zoroastrianism' in The Classical Bulletin (2007). He has also authored a manuscript titled Reason Unbound:Spiritual Practice in Islamic Peripatetic Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2011).
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Daniel Guevara
Associate Professor
Philosophy Department
University of California Santa Cruz
Webpage: http://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/detail.php?type=people&uid=guevara
Daniel Guevara works primarily in ethics and moral psychology. Recent publications include: "The Role of Intuition in Some Ethically Hard Cases," Australasian Journal of Philosophy (March 2011); "The Will as Practical Reason and the Problem of Akrasia," The Review of Metaphysics (March 2009); and Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind, co-edited with Jonathan Ellis (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). Earlier publications include: Kant's Theory of Moral Motivation (Westview Press, 2000).
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William A. Ladusaw
Dean of Humanities
UC Santa Cruz
Webpage: http://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/detail.php?type=people&uid=ladusaw
William A. Ladusaw is Dean of Humanities and Professor of Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz. He had previously served as Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education (and Accreditation Liaison Officer) and as the Provost (faculty head) of Cowell College, UCSC's founding residential college. Before joining the UCSC faculty in 1984, he held faculty positions at UCLA and the University of Iowa.
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Scott Lokey
Associate Professor
Chemistry & Biochemistry Department
University of California, Santa Cruz
Webpage: http://www.chem.ucsc.edu/~lokey/Site/Welcome.html
Scott Lokey received his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin in organic chemistry, where his research centered on the synthesis of molecules that “fold” into protein-like shapes in water and bind to specific DNA sequences. He did post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School on the synthesis of molecules designed to disrupt cellular processes related to motility and cancer metastasis, and joined the faculty at UCSC in 2002 in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research group focuses on the relationship between molecular structure and “drug-likeness”, an intuitive property that relates to a molecule’s ability to enter circulation through the gut wall and survive metabolic degradation.
Professor Lokey has a long-standing interest in the philosophy of science, especially in the area of consciousness studies, where he is interested in the intersection of neuroscience and Buddhist ideas and practice. Prof. Lokey has also participated in several interdisciplinary activities in the humanities and sciences at UCSC. In 2009 he co-curated an exhibition with Art Professor Melissa Gwyn entitled Full Disclosure, which was billed as "...an inside look at the trial and error of scientists and artists through an intimate survey of their processes". He has also been involved in the UCSC Science and Justice Program, and looks forward to contributing to this interdisciplinary project on multiculturalism, a concern central to contemporary globalized society.
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Helen Longino
Clarence Irving Lewis Professor in Philosophy
Stanford University
http://philosophy.stanford.edu/profile/Helen+Longino/
Helen Longino received her PhD in Philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University. Her teaching and research interests are in philosophy of science, social epistemology, and feminist philosophy. She is particularly interested in the relations between scientific inquiry and its social, cultural, and economic contexts. Longino is the author of Science As Social Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 1990), The Fate of Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2001), many articles in the philosophy of science, feminist philosophy and epistemology, and co-editor of Scientific Pluralism (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Her new book, Studying Human Behavior, a study of the relationship between epistemological, ontological, and social aspects of behavioral research, will be published by University of Chicago Press at the end of 2012.
Longino has taught at UC San Diego, Mills College, Rice University, the University of Minnesota, and is currently Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.
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Carlos Montemayor
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
Webpage: http://philosophy.sfsu.edu/page/carlos-montemayor
Carlos Montemayor is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He graduated from Rutgers University with a PhD in Philosophy and a Certificate in Cognitive Science. His research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, cognitive science and epistemology.
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Bo Mou
Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
San Jose State University
Webpage: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/bmou/
Bo Mou is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy at San Jose State University in California. He is contributing editor of Two Roads to Wisdom?--Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions (2001), Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy (2003), Davidson's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy (2006), Searle's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy (2008), History of Chinese Philosophy (2008), and Constructive Engagement of Analytic and Continental Approaches in Philosophy: From the Vantage Point of Comparative Philosophy (co-edited with Richard Tieszen, forthcoming in 2013). He is the author of Substantive Perspectivism: An Essay on Philosophical Concern with Truth (2009) and Chinese Philosophy A-Z (2009/2010 revision). He is Editor of the international journal Comparative Philosophy (www.comparativephilosophy.org).
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Amir Najmi
Senior Staff Statistician at Google
Webpage: http://www.spoke.com/people/amir-najmi-3e1429c09e597c1003fb4409
Amir works on statistical modeling and prediction methodology for large-scale high-dimensional data. He is interested in a critical understanding of mathematical models, and the role of human insight in machine learning. He is an engineer informed by the humanities. His is a typical story of migration and integration into American society, presenting the usual questions of assimilation and multi-culture. He sees an important role for philosophy in helping answer question arising from modeling and from multiculturalism.
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Vanita Seth
Associate Professor
Politics Department
University of California, Santa Cruz
Webpage: http://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/detail.php?type=people&uid=vseth
Vanita Seth is Associate Professor of Politics at UCSC and the Director of Cultural Studies. She is author of Europe's Indians: Producing Racial Difference 1500-1900 and a co-editor of Postcolonial Studies.
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Ronald R. Sundstrom
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of San Francisco
Webpage: http://usf.usfca.edu/fac-staff/rrsundstrom/Site/Welcome.html
Webpage: http://www.usfca.edu/faculty/Arts_and_Sciences/Ronald_Sundstrom/
Ronald Robles Sundstrom is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco; additionally, he teaches for USF’s African American Studies program and the Master of Public Affairs program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center of Public Service and the Common Good. He is the Co-Winner (with Brian Komei Dempster) of the 2010 USF Distinguished Teaching Award. His areas of research include race theory, political and social theory, and African and Asian American philosophy. He has published several essays and a book in these areas, including The Browning of America and The Evasion of Social Justice (SUNY, 2008). His current work is on themes involving national belonging and democracy, including xenophobia and immigration policy, and fair and affordable housing policy and its relation to democratic participation.
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Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir
Associate Professor of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
Webpagehttp://online.sfsu.edu/~asta
Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir is an Icelandic philosopher teaching in the Department of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. She works mainly in metaphysics, social philosophy, and feminist theory. In addition to articles in philosophical journals about such topics as realism and idealism, essentialism, sex and gender, and social construction, Ásta’s published writings include a translation of an essay in philosophical logic, a travel journal from a math olympiad, poems, a playbill article, and magazine articles on philosophical themes, and she has addressed philosophical themes in the Book of Job and Carla Lucero's opera Wuornos in public venues. Ásta has a BA in math and philosophy from Brandeis University, AM in philosophy from Harvard, and a PhD in philosophy from MIT.
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Justin Tiwald
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
Webpage: http://online.sfsu.edu/~jtiwald/
Justin Tiwald is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and has published several articles on Confucian ethics and political philosophy, including “Xunzi on Moral Expertise” (Dao) and “Dai Zhen on Sympathetic Concern” (Journal of Chinese Philosophy). He has been Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Manuel Vargas
Professor of Philosophy and Law
Philosophy Department
University of San Francisco
Webpage: http://usf.usfca.edu/fac-staff/mrvargas/home.htm
Vargas is the author of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Oxford, in press). With John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom, he co-authored Four Views on Free Will (Blackwell, 2007). He is editing Rational and Social Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Bratman (with Gideon Yaffe). Vargas' main philosophical interests include the nature of moral agency, the philosophy of law, Latin American philosophy, (especially historical work on race and identity) and questions of philosophical methodology.
Vargas was a recipient of the first American Philosophical Association Prize in Latin American Thought, and his research on responsible agency has been recognized with year-long research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Stanford Humanities Center. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, and has held visiting appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology.
At the University of San Francisco, Vargas has taught courses in Philosophy, Psychology, Latin American Studies, the Honors Program in the Humanities, and the St. Ignatius Institute. In its inaugural year (2012) he received USF's College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Scholar Award, for "exceptional scholarly work of great academic value and impact." While at USF, he has held the NEH Chair in the Humanities, (2005-6), been awarded a Team Innovation Award (with Saera Khan, psychology) for development of USF's Program on Mind and Agency (2011-2012), and held a Davies Forum Professorship (2012). In 2012, he was awarded the USF's Distinguished Research Award, a university-wide award given annually to a single faculty member.
Before receiving his Joint-Ph.D. in Philosophy and Humanities from Stanford University (2001), he worked as a baker and a professional video game tester.
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Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Assistant Professor
Philosophy Department
University of California, Santa Cruz
Webpage: http://www.rgwinther.com
Rasmus' core research area is the philosophy of science, where he investigates the promises and dangers of scientific theories. For instance, how do theories about consciousness and climate change influence technology? How are evolutionary and psychological theories used to draw conclusions about race, sex/gender, and intelligence? What are the ethical and knowledge limits of theory? More generally, he is interested in pluralism and multiculture – in science, in philosophy, and in culture at large. (He grew up in Caracas, Venezuela to Danish parents, and attended international schools.) How can understanding and collaboration across perspectives and cultures be encouraged, and how can misunderstanding and tension be blocked? What role can philosophical techniques such as the Socratic method, conceptual clarification, and analysis of assumptions and frameworks, play in forging common ground?
He is an assistant professor of philosophy at the UC Santa Cruz, and was (2003-7) an assistant professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He has also been a part-time guest researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Rasmus has ongoing collaborators at UNAM and NBI). He holds BA and MA degrees in philosophy from Stanford University, and a masters and a PhD (2003) from the History and Philosophy of Science Department, as well as a masters from the Biology Department (both are top-ranked programs) at Indiana University, Bloomington. Rasmus has published over 25 articles in philosophy journals such as Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Biology and Philosophy, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, and in science journals such as PNAS, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Journal of Experimental Zoology, and Acta Biotheoretica. At the moment, he’s working on a few book manuscripts. He has lectured at over 30 universities, including Berkeley, Cambridge, Humboldt (Berlin), London School of Economics, MIT, Notre Dame, Stanford, and University of Chicago.
