I am currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

I earned a PhD in philosophy from Emory University in August, 2oo4. I’ve held teaching positions at Emory and at Georgia State University, both in Atlanta. I moved to Texas and became Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas (UNT) in January, 2005. In 2008, I became Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID) at UNT. In August 2013 I moved back to Atlanta, where I spent two years as Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

As a student, I was trained in the history of philosophy. In my professional life, I’ve held teaching-only and research-only positions, as well as a hybrid administration/research position as Assistant Director of CSID. While at UNT, even though I mainly conducted research and directed the center, I was also able to teach some really cool courses. At Georgia Tech, I taught courses in Advanced Science and Technology Policy (with Diana Hicks), Modern Philosophy, and Science, Technology, and Human Values.

Both my teaching and research explore the value of knowledge. I focus especially on knowledge institutions (the university and science and technology funding agencies, in particular), the evaluation of knowledge (to include not only scholarly outputs, but also broader societal impacts), and the role knowledge users ought to play in answering the question of the value of knowledge (moving beyond coproduction of knowledge to explore the question of who should count as a ‘peer’).

I am seeking to explore new ways of teaching and conducting research that contribute to our changing the world for the better, as well as to our understanding it better. That’s what this blog is about.