New Fellows
Greg Brown
University of Pennsylvania
Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society
Greg D. Brown is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania. He works primarily in the philosophy of action and in ethics, with a focus on the virtue of practical wisdom. His dissertation develops a neo-Aristotelian account of practical rationality that is indebted to the work of G. E. M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot, and his interests extend to various other areas, especially to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Aquinas, (meta)ontology, the history of analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 2024 and his B.A. in Mathematics from Swarthmore College in 2016.
Qian Cao
Columbia University
Department of Philosophy
Qian Cao is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Scholar with the Initiative in Ancient and Contemporary Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. Her primary research interests lie in Ancient Greek Philosophy—especially Plato's moral psychology and epistemology—and in psychoanalysis. Her current research explores the psychological difficulties of inquiry from a perspective that draws on both Plato and Freud. Qian holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from NYU.
Christopher Coome
Duke University
Civil Discourse Project
Christopher Coome is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow at the Civil Discourse Project at Duke University. His research examines intellectual and religious history with a focus on civil society, the long 19th century, and transformations in Western religiosity. Before his academic career, Chris worked in both business and politics, and he is excited to put this background to use in advancing the Civil Discourse Project. Chris holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Queen’s University, and a B.A. in history from McMaster University. His doctoral dissertation received an award from Queen’s University for its distinction and is being published by Oxford University Press.
Patrick Fitzsimmons
University of Pennsylvania
Department of Economics
Patrick Fitzsimmons is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Economics. His research focuses include economic history, political economy, and economic growth. His current research interest is on how conflict and violence have shaped state/empire-building and political systems in the premodern world. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University.
Andrew Flynn
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Department of Philosophy
Andrew McKay Flynn is a current Barry Center affiliate and a former John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Associate at the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He works in ethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of action. His current research project broadly concerns the significance of ideals that people are blocked from acting upon. In connection with this project, he has published papers on anger and on akrasia, and he is at work on papers on contentment and on irony. He received a PhD in Philosophy from UCLA, an MA in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and a BA in History and Philosophy (double major) from Columbia University.
Landon Hobbs
Zephyr Institute
Landon Hobbs is Senior Fellow and Director of Academic Programs at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto, California. His area of academic research is Ancient Greek philosophy, especially the theoretical philosophy of Aristotle, and his current research focuses on the metaphysical principle that the cause must precontain its effect. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Pepperdine University.
James Howard
Princeton University
James Madison Program
James Howard is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of religion, abolition, and politics in the American Civil War Era. James holds a Ph.D. in History from Baylor University, where he completed a dissertation tracing the religious and political alliances formed between radical and evangelical abolitionists.
Julia Nakamura
Harvard University
Human Flourishing Program
Julia Nakamura will be a John and Daria Barry postdoctoral fellow with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University (starting in January 2026). Her research integrates theories and perspectives from health psychology, epidemiology, biostatistics, and translational science to identify, understand, and intervene upon prosocial behaviors (e.g., volunteering, helping behaviours, charitable giving) that improve health and well-being. Julia received her M.A. in Health Psychology from the University of British Columbia, and her B.S. in Psychobiology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Health Psychology at the University of British Columbia.
Joseph Karol Natali
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Joseph Karol Natali is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. His work at Princeton will focus on the relationship between the American presidency and the federal bureaucracy. Joseph specializes in American constitutional thought and practice, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which institutions structure political outcomes. Joseph holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. In political science from Baylor University, and a B.A. in politics and history from Saint Vincent College.
Frank Ngo
Ohio State University
Salmon P. Chase Center for American Civics, Culture, and Society
Frank Ngo is Post Doctoral Scholar at the Salmon P. Chase Center for American Civics, Culture, and Society. Trained as a social anthropologist, his research examines religion, secularity, time, gender, labor, and debt through their intersection in the concept of the vocation. His current project focuses on social institutions as the sites of cultivating meaningful and purposeful lives. Ngo received his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, MA in Global Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, and BA in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Loren Reinoso
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Loren Reinoso is John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. His research focuses on the ethics and history of representative democracy — in particular, the relationship between government representation and citizens’ agency. He holds an A.B. in Politics from Princeton University, an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
Tucker Sigourney
Harvard University
Human Flourishing Program
Tucker Sigourney is a John and Daria postdoctoral fellow with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He has a PhD in philosophy from Florida State University and undergraduate degrees in philosophy and physics from Grove City College. His research centers mainly on ethics and action theory from a broadly Thomistic angle, and especially on love and its place in ethics. Most of his published work has been on the nature and norms of forgiveness.
James McFetridge Wilson
Ohio State University
Salmon P. Chase Center for American Civics, Culture, and Society
James McFetridge Wilson is a postdoctoral fellow at the Chase Center at The Ohio State University. His intellectual interests circle around issues of theology and modernity with a special interest in the theological significance of modern literature in relation to the philosophical commitments of secularization. James is graduate of Deep Springs College, the University of Virginia, Duke Divinity School and the University of Cambridge, and before joining the Chase Center he was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame where he taught in the Department of Theology and continued work on his forthcoming monograph, “The ‘Strange Religion’ of William Faulkner: Modernism, Metaphysics, and Prophecy.”