Sara De Leonardis is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Cornell University, where she is writing a dissertation on perception and cognition in Plato’s late dialogues. Her research interests include ancient theories of mind and Plato’s cosmology and physics. She is also interested in feminism, technology, and AI, topics she enjoys exploring with her students. https://www.saradeleonardis.com 1. What advice do you wish someone had given you? I wish someone had told me earlier that it is worth exploring philosophy through different media, not only through traditional academic writing. I have always loved photography and art, but I had never taken a real photography class or used a professional camera. In my third year of the PhD, I enrolled in a photography course at Cornell. At first, I worried it might distract me from my academic work; instead, it opened my mind to how many different ways there are to approach philosophical questions outside of traditional writing. My final project grew out of my interest in technology and AI. I worked with AI-generated images (see below) …

Brant Entrekin is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who works in social/political philosophy, applied ethics, and feminist philosophy. He also has work in religious studies and philosophy of religion. He is currently writing his dissertation on allyship in social justice movements. More information about Brant’s research and teaching can be found at brantentrekin.com. What are you working on right now? Currently, I’m juggling writing dissertation chapters while turning them into journal articles! My dissertation is on the norms around allyship in social justice movements. I noticed that allyship was really overlooked in the philosophical literature and, when people did talk about it, they mostly focused on the ways that allies can act in oppressive ways. I’m wanting to do something a bit more constructive by thinking about who allies are and how they should fight for social justice along with the oppressed. The project right now that excites me is the chapter I’m writing on deference to the oppressed. I am trying to think about the norm of deference for …

Lucas DeClavasio is an MA student at the University of Guelph. He is in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence program and his research focuses on ethical AI adoption. Before grad school, he owned a creative studio and worked in research and marketing operations.  What excites you about philosophy? The growing prevalence of AI in everyday life led me to philosophy. In my experience as an entrepreneur, research analyst, and in marketing and research ops, I inevitably experimented with AI and ended up facing ethical dilemmas. I quickly realized these were new experiences, not just for me, but for others too. When I went looking for answers, I found conflicting information. As one may expect, my deep dive into philosophical perspectives and how they might apply to AI ethics has left me with more questions than answers, but I have at least given myself some time to contemplate where I stand on the topic. What are you working on right now? I’m working on my final coursework, and then I’ll be wrapping up my final research …

Eva Dadlez is Professor Emerita of philosophy at the University of Central Oklahoma and currently resides in Ithaca, NY. She received her PhD from Syracuse University. She writes on issues at the intersection (sometimes the collision) of aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology.  Link to your website: evadadlez.com What excites you about philosophy? In the beginning, nothing excited me about philosophy. I didn’t take a single philosophy course as an undergrad. When I was doing a Masters in an entirely unrelated field, a friend (now my husband of nearly 50 years) told me about his graduate-level aesthetics class. “Wait. So these people think they can determine what art is without being able to draw their way out of a paper bag?” I asked in some umbrage. I’d been doing paid art and illustration for years as a side gig. “I have to take that class! What can they be thinking?” I took it as an elective (I had one elective course in my program, and I’d been hoarding it). The class was a revelation. When ways in …

Elena Comay del Junco is Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the history of philosophy, primarily Ancient Greek and Islamic philosophy. Recent and forthcoming work includes essays on Aristotle’s and Ibn Sina’s accounts of love as well as a translation of Ibn Sina’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ. She also teaches and writes on questions of gender and feminism. In addition to her scholarly endeavors, she also writes criticism, poetry, and fiction; recent publications include an essay on the novelist Pierre Guyotat and a translation of an 18th-century comic opera about Aristotle’s sex life. What are you reading right now? Would you recommend it? I have bad habit of reading too many things at once, but among those is Rumi’s Masnavi, which I’ve been slowly working through in a bilingual edition to teach myself Persian. I’m about 1,200 of 24,000 couplets of the way in and would, at least on that basis, recommend it. The skepticism about the popularization of Rumi is in some sense justified—in addition to …

The APA Blog is publishing excerpts from Cliff Sosis’s long-form interviews with philosophers, which appear at his blog, What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? The excerpts below are from an interview originally published on March 20, 2026, and reprinted with permission from Cliff Sosis. In this interview, Felipe De Brigard; Professor of Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience; Faculty member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; and Associate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society talks about growing up among and learning to live with bombs, kidnappings, and conflicts in Colombia during the time of Pablo Escobar, Catholicism, Dungeons and Dragons, aspirations to become a priest, hormones, Nietzsche, theater, Descartes, attending the National University of Colombia, memory and Aristotle; applying to and being rejected from 10 grad schools; how Adrian Cussins helped him get into Tufts, Fodor, beer pong, Dennett, and working at the Danish Pastry House; contemplating going to grad school for neuroscience and getting into UNC philosophy; the differences between public and private universities; working with Prinz, Knobe, Lycan, Dorit Bar-On, and eventually Kelly Giovanello …