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 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.
Justin Hawkins
Columbia University
Center for Medical Ethics
Justin R. Hawkins is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia University Center for Medical Ethics. His research areas include virtue ethics, bioethics, disability theory, and the relationship of political theory and Christian theology. His current research project examines the history of American presidential bioethics commissions and councils to investigate whether and how they serve a significant pedagogical and advisory purpose in the development of bioethics policy. He received his PhD with distinction from Yale University. He also holds an MAR in the Philosophy of Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a BA in Government from Georgetown University.
Thomas Holman
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Thomas W. Holman 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 work focuses on the role of communication and debate in politics, especially in the context of twentieth century continental thought. Thomas holds a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America, where he completed a dissertation on Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin’s 1953 debate over totalitarianism. He is currently working on a book project which explores the role of the human person in the thought of Hannah Arendt.
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.
Austen McDougal
New York University
Center for Bioethics
Austen McDougal is Faculty Fellow at NYU’s Center for Bioethics. He works on the ethics and moral psychology of the heart, so to speak, where he sees agency bottoming out in motives rather than beliefs or emotions. He is especially interested in the various kinds of reasons for love and compassion. Before NYU, he was a postdoc at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values with the Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion. He has a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Computer Science from Princeton.
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.
Frank Ngo
Ohio State University
Salmon P. Chase Center for American Civics, Culture, and Society
Frank Ngo is Post Doctoral Researcher 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.
Sophie Pangle
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Sophie Pangle 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. Her research in the history of political thought addresses theories of dignity, indignation, justice, and freedom, with a focus on late modern responses to ancient Greek political philosophy. Her current book project compares the concepts of amour-propre and thumos in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s response to the thought of Plato. Her work has been published in History of Political Thought and The Political Science Reviewer. She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and a B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Armando Perez-Gea
Stanford University
Program in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education
Armando Perez-Gea is a Fellow to Diversify Teaching and Learning at the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Program at Stanford University. His research proposes a role morality of authority relations that builds on Aristotle's theory of rule and the neo-republicans' concept of domination by proposing that there are four kinds of authority relations that each has its own standard of what counts as domination. He has published in Ancient Philosophy. Armando holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Philosophy, M.A.R. in Philosophy of Religion, and M.A. in Economics from Yale University, as well as M.A. in Philosophy and B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Stanford University.
Wan Ning Seah
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Wan Ning Seah is a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Her research interests are in religious pluralism and toleration, ancient and early modern political thought, French political thought, and democratic theory. Her current project examines religious pluralism as an alternative framework for managing religious diversity in non-liberal regimes, drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, including the political thought of Montesquieu. Wan Ning holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University and a B.A. in Political Science from Middlebury College.
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.
Avery Williams
Princeton University
James Madison Program
Avery Williams is a John and Daria Barry postdoctoral fellow with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. His research focuses on the history of political thought with an emphasis on the political philosophy of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. His forthcoming book, Universal Tyranny: The Socratic Attack on Tyrannical Psychology, discusses the widely misunderstood critique of tyranny and the psychology of the tyrant in the early Socratics. He received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.