The Department of Philosophy is committed to placing its doctoral candidates in suitable academic employment.
The three main components of the placement program has been devised to make UBC graduates competitive in the philosophy labour market.
1. Research and Publication
Graduate students are advised to tailor their seminar and thesis research to the needs of the philosophy market, while of course, pursuing their own philosophical interests. Presentation and publication are essential to success in placement. Students are required to present their on-going research in the Graduate Student Colloquium and some senior candidates are invited to give presentations as part of the Philosophy Department Colloquium.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies provides travel stipends for students presenting papers at academic conferences. Members of the Department with extensive publication experience help students prepare manuscripts for submission.
2. Teaching Experience
Most graduate students serve as teaching assistants and many doctoral students teach courses of their own, ideally at a variety of levels and in a variety of areas of philosophy. Extensive teaching experience is an asset for candidates seeking teaching positions. They should write a teaching statement, assemble a comprehensive set of teaching evaluations and should solicit at least two letters of recommendation that focus on teaching covering a period of several terms.
3. The Placement Workshop
The Philosophy Department sponsors an annual workshop for prospective job-seekers. New graduate students are encouraged to attend so that they may plan their activities in graduate school with placement in mind. Workshop activities include:
- An introduction to preparing for the job market
- A roadmap to the dossier: letters, writing samples, dissertation abstract, teaching statement and evaluations
- Tips and tricks from recent job candidates
- Videotaped mock interviews and “job talks”
Philosophy Placement Program Data
See where some of our talented alumni are working as a result of the Philosophy Placement Program.
| Student | Year | Dissertation Title | Supervisor | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phyllis Pearson | 2023 | The Normative Significance of Epistemic Agency | Jonathan Ichikawa | Postdoctoral Researcher, Central European University |
| Emily Tilton | 2023 | A "Purist" Feminist Epistemology | Jonathan Ichikawa | Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California (Tenure Track) |
| Jordan Wadden | 2023 | Ethics and Healthcare Artificial Intelligence: Some Problems and Solutions for Decision-Making Systems | Daniel Steel | Bioethicist and Regional Ethics Hub Facilitator, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences |
| Katherine Cheng | 2023 | The Social Construction of Personal Identity | Evan Thompson | Community-Based Research Coordinator, Learning Exchange, The University of British Columbia |
| Graham Moore | 2023 | Metasemantics, moderate inflationism, and correspondence truth | Ori Simchen | Instructor, Langara College |
| Ian Heckman | 2022 | On Feeling the Dance: Motor Response and Its Place in Dance Appreciation | Dominic McIver Lopes | Instructor, Coquitlam College |
| Nathan Cockram | 2021 | Contextualizing testimony | Jonathan Ichikawa | Ontario Government |
| Richard Sandlin | 2020 | Affective Qualities: What Makes Objects Pleasant | Murat Aydede | Regular, Full-Time Philosophy Faculty, Douglas College |
| Madeleine Ransom | 2020 | Perceptual Learning for Expertise | Dominic Lopes and Murat Aydede | Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia Okanagan (Tenure Track) |
| Yu Shing (Irwin) Chan | 2019 | Unbreak My Heart: Blame and Forgiveness in Personal Relationships | David Silver | Sessional Instructor, University of British Columbia |
| Rebecca Livernois | 2019 | A Philosophical Analysis of the Concept of an Externality in Economic Theory and Policy | Margaret Schabas | Postdoctoral Fellow, Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University |
| Sina Fazelpour | 2019 | Evaluating Counterfactuals: Case Studies of Modeling Choices and their Impolication | Evan Thompson and Christopher Mole | Assistant Professor, Philosophy and Computer Science, Northeastern University (Tenure Track) |
| Garson Leder | 2018 | The Skill of Mental Health | Christopher Mole | Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Tenure Track) |
| Jiwon Byun | 2017 | Thomas Henry Huxley's Agnostic Philosophy of Science | John Beatty | Adjunct Professor, School of Liberal Studies, Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea |
| Stefan Lukits | 2016 | Information Theory and Partial Belief Reasoning | Paul Bartha | Sessional Instructor, University of British Columbia |
| Gerardo (Jerry) Viera | 2016 | Time in Mind: The Cognitive Science of Temporal Representation | Eric Margolis | Tenure-Track Assistant Professorship, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom |
| Taylor Davis | 2014 | The Evolution of Religion and the Evolution of Culture | Eric Margolis | Assistant Professor, Dept of Philosophy, Purdue (Tenure Track) |
| Tyler DesRoches | 2014 | The World as a Garden: A Philosophical Analysis of Natural Capital in Economics | Margaret Schabas | Associate Professor, Sustainability and Human Well-Being, School of Sustainability, Arizona State |
| Jamie Hellewell | 2014 | Political Freedom: A Defence of Natural Rights Republicanism | Paul Russell | Site Director, Servant Partners, Vancouver, Postdoctoral Fellow, UBC Centre for Applied Ethics |
| Andrew Inkpen | 2014 | Denaturing Nature: Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Artificial-Natural Distinction in the Life Sciences | John Beatty | Assistant Professor, Dept of Philosophy, Mount Allison University |
| Alirio Rosales | 2014 | The Narrative Structure of Scientific Theorizing | John Beatty and Sarah Otto (Zoology) | Management and Information Systems, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia |
| Ian Brooks | 2013 | Virtue and situation: Effects of situational factors on attention and emotion | Scott Anderson | Lecturer, Fraser International College |
| Oisin Derry | 2013 | Agentive Experience Compatibilism | Paul Russell | Assistant Professor (tenure track), York University |