My current research engages the cross-section of the philosophy of sex and gender, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics. I have several papers in preparation on these topics including:

“SEX ON A DESERT ISLAND”

This paper offers a conceptual argument for the sex/gender distinction. I aim to demonstrate that gender ontologically depends on sex but sex does not ontologically depend on gender. In doing so, I put forward a thought experiment called Sex on a Desert Island, which aims to illuminate this asymmetrical dependence relation. My argument is meant to counter strong social constructionist and biological determinist positions on the sex/gender distinction. 

and another is forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy:

“SEX AND GENDER”

This chapter surveys essentialist and anti-essentialist theories of sex and gender. It does so by engaging three approaches to sex and gender: externalism, internalism, and contextualism. The chapter also draws attention to two key debates about sex and gender in the feminist literature: the debate about the sex/gender distinction (the distinction debate) and the debate about whether sex and gender have essences (the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate). In addition, it describes three problems that theories of sex and gender tend to face: the Inclusion Problem, the Definition Problem, and the Exclusion Problem. Lastly, the chapter highlights why the division between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of sex and gender is not clear.

The preprint is available here.

I am also the co-author of:

“STRATEGIC CONCEPTUAL ENGINEERING FOR EPISTEMIC AND SOCIAL AIMS”

Examining previous discussions on how to construe the concepts of gender and race, we advocate what we call strategic conceptual engineering. This is the employment of a (possibly novel) concept for specific epistemic or social aims, concomitant with the openness to use a different concept (e.g., of race) for other purposes. We illustrate this approach by sketching three distinct concepts of gender and arguing that all of them are needed, as they answer to different social aims. The first concept serves the aim of identifying and explaining gender-based discrimination. It is similar to Haslanger’s well-known account, except that rather than offering a definition of ‘woman’ we focus on ‘gender’ as one among several axes of discrimination. The second concept of gender is to assign legal rights and social recognitions, and thus is to be trans-inclusive. We argue that this cannot be achieved by previously suggested concepts that include substantial gender-related psychological features, such as awareness of social expectations. Instead, our concept counts someone as being of a certain gender solely based on the person’s self-identification with this gender. The third concept of gender serves the aim of personal empowerment by means of one’s gender identity. In this context, substantial psychological features and awareness of one’s social situation are involved. While previous accounts of concepts have focused on their role in determining extensions, we point to contexts where a concept’s role in explanation and moral reasoning can be more important.

I completed my PhD in philosophy at the University of Alberta in 2023.

My doctoral dissertation is entitled “Sex as a Biological Kind: A Case of Strategic Conceptual Engineering” and is a novel application of conceptual engineering for epistemic and social aims that intersects the history and philosophy of science, metaphysics, value theory and metaphilosophy. I argue for the dual thesis that sex is a biological kind and that humans are in need of a new sex concept.