Speakers (Spring 2021)


Dr. Duana Fullwiley

Dr. Fullwiley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She is an anthropologist of science and medicine who explores the intersections of social identities, health outcomes, and molecular genetic findings. She is the author of the book The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa (Princeton, 2011) which won both the Royal Anthropological Institute’s 2011 Amaury Talbot Prize for the most valuable work of African Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association’s 2014 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology.

Dr. Ingrid Waldron

Dr. Waldron an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University, the Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), and the Flagship Project Co-Lead of Improving the Health of People of African Descent at Dalhousie’s Healthy Populations Institute. As a sociologist and community advocate, her research focuses on the health and mental health impacts of systemic racism. She is the author of There is Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities. The documentary There’s Something in the Water (2019) is an adaptation of this important work—of which Dr. Waldron was a coproducer.

Dr. Jenny Reardon

Dr. Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Centered largely around contemporary genomic science, her research focuses on the social and political dimensions of scientific ideas and practices—especially issues related to identity, justice, and democracy. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017).

Dr. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe

Dr. Sharpe is the Founder and President of WISER (Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race) whose mission is to expand women-focused policy research to include the social, economic, cultural, and political well-being of Asian, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous American, and Multiracial women. With doctorate degrees in both mathematics and economics, her research interests are wide reaching, ranging from gender and racial inequality, the diversity of STEM, to the demography of higher education. She is the co-editor of the Review of Black Political Economy and served as the past President of the National Economic Association. 

Chamara Moore

Chamara Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, with graduate minors in Gender Studies and Screen Cultures. Her primary interests are oriented towards representations of Black womanhood in popular culture at large—particularly the misogynoir present in films, TV, and comics.  Her research examines how speculative fiction writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Octavia Butler have created representations of Black women outside of the Eurocentric American imagination. Her work seeks to note the inventive ways in which Black artists like Janelle Monáe and Ava DuVernay have sought to empower women of color across various media platforms, and interrogate how this can be achieved in Superhero films historically dominated by white masculinity.


Graduate Student Speakers

Greyson Abid

Greyson (he/his/him) is a sixth year PhD student in the Philosophy Department at UC Berkeley. He is primarily interested in philosophy of mind and foundational issues in cognitive science. His secondary interests include metaphysics, philosophy of race, Arabic philosophy, and philosophy of language. His dissertation is on the recognition of familiar people, places, and things.

Ryan Michaël Miller

Ryan is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Geneva on the Metaphysics of Quantum Objects project led by Claudio Calosi. He wrote a licentiate thesis at the Catholic University of America on the metaphysics of material constitution and a masters’ thesis at the University of Saint Andrews on the mereology of emergence. His PhD thesis Quantum Considerations in the Metaphysics of Levels explores the relationships among mereologies, theories of emergence, and interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Cameron C. Yetman

Cameron is a Masters student in philosophy at Western University (London, Ontario), and a recent alum of the University of King’s College, Halifax. His interests include the epistemology of thought experiments, the metaphysics of race, the philosophy of language, and metaphilosophy. His research into the metaphysics of race began with a fascinating seminar led by Dr. Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie University), and he hopes to continue this line of research into the metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics of race and racial language. He is very excited to present at HPSTV!

Arjun Sawhney

Arjun is a PhD student in philosophy at Queen’s University. He is currently studying jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the social impacts of artificial intelligence. His master’s dissertation explored the concept of personhood within political liberalism and the law, and also examined the implications of granting personhood status to autonomous robots. Arjun hopes that the tools of philosophy can be used to enrich the political, legal, and moral foundations of society.