Ph.D. Students
Ritt Culbreth
BA Wake Forest University, Philosophy and Politics & International Affairs
Interests: Philosophy of Law, Political and Social Philosophy, Ethics, Applied Ethics, History of Philosophy
Email: wrc40@georgetown.edu
Ritt joined the department in the Fall of 2025. He grew up in Harrisonburg, VA, and did his undergraduate at Wake Forest University, where he studied Philosophy and Politics & International Affairs. His interests are in philosophy of law, ethics, and political and social philosophy.
Jacob Farris
BA Penn State University, Philosophy
MA Florida State University, Philosophy
Interests: Metaethics, Normative Ethics, Moral Psychology
Email: jf1768@georgetown.edu
Jacob joined Georgetown’s philosophy PhD program in the Fall of 2025. His interests are in ethics and moral psychology.
Mariana Gomez
BA California State University, Fullerton
Interests: Critical Phenomenology, Decolonial Indigenous Thought, Women of Color Feminisms, Existentialism
Email: mg2002@georgetown.edu
Mariana joined Georgetown’s philosophy doctoral program in the fall of 2021. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and completed her B.A. in philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. She is currently writing a dissertation on decolonization within the context of settler colonialism in the United States and how critical phenomenology may aid various settler identities and subjectivities. Besides her philosophical interests, Mariana enjoys working with prison abolition activist groups in California, traveling to Mexico City to visit her family, and watching movies with her niece, Marissa.
Cassius Hou
BA American University
MA American University
Email: ch1493@georgetown.edu
Cassius joined the doctoral program in 2024. Their research interests include feminist philosophy, moral psychology, social ontology, bioethics, the concept of expertise, and the philosophy of disability. They are particularly interested in exploring how we construct ourselves in relation to others and how language constrains our understanding of who we are.
Bella-Rose Kelly
BS Scranton University
MA Boston College
Interests: Critical Phenomenology, Settler Colonial Studies, Philosophy of Disability
Email: bgk29@georgetown.edu
Bella-Rose started the doctoral program in the fall of 2023. Her research interests include critical phenomenology, settler colonial studies, and philosophy of disability. In her spare time, Bella-Rose enjoys hiking, camping, plants, and cats.
Matthew Koshak
BA Louisiana State University
MA Tufts University, Philosophy
Interests: Philosophy of Disability, Ethics, Jewish Philosophy
Email: mk2176@georgetown.edu
Matthew is interested in the philosophy of disability (especially cognitive disability), ethics and its various histories, and Jewish philosophy. In particular, he is interested in questions surrounding moral communities—what constitutes a moral community, how the boundaries of moral communities are drawn, and which strategies of thought can help us to create more inclusive moral communities.
Before beginning at Georgetown, he received his MA in philosophy from Tufts University and his BA in philosophy and political science from Louisiana State University. He enjoys exploring used bookstores, listening to new music, hiking, and walking (often while listening to music, but rarely while reading!).
Shahriar Khosravi
MA Texas Tech University, Philosophy
MA Tehran University, Linguistics
Interests: Epistemology, Action Theory, Political Philosophy, Metaethics, Philosophy of AI
Email: sk2343@georgetown.edu
Website: https://www.shahriarkhosravi.com/
S.P. Leeds
BA Tulane University
MA Tulane University
Interests: Philosophy of Disability, Critical Phenomenology, Pragmatics
Email: spl56@georgetown.edu
S.P. started the doctoral program in the fall of 2020. Their research interests include ethics, social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, philosophy of language, phenomenology, and philosophical issues concerning oppression, disability, gender, sexuality, race, and technology.
S.P. is the Managing Editor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ). They also co-organize the DIScourse—an ongoing, virtual philosophy and disability workshop—with Sara Purinton (UPenn), in partnership with the Society for Philosophy and Disability (SPD). Previously, S.P. worked as the Managing Editor of the Journal of Philosophy of Disability (JPD) from 2021–2023 and they were the first graduate student to complete the Georgetown Disability Studies MA/PhD Certificate in 2022.
In their (very little) spare time, S.P. enjoys practicing photography, making art, hiking, gardening, cooking with their partner, and playing fetch with their dog.
Shohei Matsumoto
BS The University of Tokyo, Physics
BA The University of Tokyo, Philosophy
MA The University of Tokyo, Philosophy
Interests: Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science
Email: sm4315@georgetown.edu
Shohei is from Japan and started his Ph.D. program at Georgetown in August 2025. His philosophical interests mainly reside in epistemology and philosophy of language (especially pragmatics), being especially obsessed with such questions as: What grounds epistemic warrant/justification? How can one gain epistemically warranted beliefs by relying on others and instruments? How is it possible for us to communicate with each other? What are the norms governing conversations? Additionally and relatedly, he has also been getting interested in such fields as philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, meta-philosophy, and metaphysics as well. When not studying philosophy, Shohei enjoys exploring unfamiliar foods, visiting museums, and traveling to new places.
Penney Miyan
BA Stony Brook University
MA Georgetown University, Philosophy
MS Tufts University School of Medicine, Biomedical Sciences
Interests: Bioethics, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind
Email: pm1154@georgetown.edu
Penney is a fourth-year MD/PhD Candidate in Bioethics (Philosophy) from Long Island, NY. She is interested in using phenomenology as a tool to understand perceptual recognition and learning in aesthetic experiences; namely those related to beauty and ugliness. Her dissertation project centers on the ethics of cosmetic surgery. In her free time, Penney enjoys reading, being an EMT with her hometown fire department, live music, and going to SolidCore.
Henry Olree
BA Dickinson College, MA Georgetown University, Philosophy
Email: ho188@georgetown.edu
From Montgomery, Alabama, Henry joined Georgetown’s philosophy Ph.D. program in the Fall of 2024. His research interests reside mainly in technology ethics, epistemology, and metaphilosophy. In his free time, Henry enjoys video & board games, music, exploring DC, and spending time with friends.
Will Perrin
BA Pepperdine University, MA Northern Illinois University, Philosophy
Interests: Epistemology, Metaethics, Philosophy of Language, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion
Email: wtp14@georgetown.edu
Will, hailing from the coastal ranges of Southern California, is a first-year doctoral student interested in what to do and how we know. Those slippery evaluative words like ‘ought’ and ‘rational’ at play in our deliberative lives are particularly interesting to Will. But Will is also broadly interested in most philosophical topics he has come upon so far. Will enjoys, aside from philosophy, sports, humor, and music.
Benjamin Prisk
BA (Hon.) University of Auckland, Philosophy and Latin
Interests: Medieval Philosophy, Mysticism, Virtue Theory, Metaphysics (Time and Modality)
Email: bap90@georgetown.edu
Benjamin entered the philosophy PhD program at Georgetown in August 2023. He has a broad interest in medieval philosophy, with a more specific focus on modality, time, and virtue. He is also interested in mysticism and its relation to philosophy, especially insofar as it involves ways of articulating one’s grasp of reality that are more than merely poetic but less than rigorously analytic. He is particularly interested in the mysticism of Hadewijch of Antwerp, Julian of Norwich, and Thomas Merton.
Alex Raycroft
BA Calvin College, Philosophy & Political Science
Interests: Feminist Philosophy, Social Epistemology, Virtue Ethics
Email: ar1734@georgetown.edu
Alex is from Gary, Indiana and began studies at Georgetown in the fall of 2021. Her philosophical interests spring from the question of how we might flourish together under conditions of oppression. Alex is currently writing a dissertation about purity culture and sexual violence that explores connections between the epistemic, the embodied, and place. When not philosophizing, you can find her birding or organizing in her community.
Andrew Schildcrout
BA University of Chicago, History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine
Interests: Ethics, Bioethics, Philosophy of Medicine
Email: ats118@georgetown.edu
Andrew joined Georgetown’s M.D./Ph.D. dual degree program in the Fall of 2023. He has broad interests in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine, including theories of justice in healthcare and how to understand medical ethics within a complex, collaborative world. Andrew is from Metro Detroit, and he enjoys running, hiking, cooking, and playing the bass.
Chun Hin Jeffrey Tsoi
BA Chinese University of Hong Kong, Philosophy
JD Georgetown University Law Center
Interests: Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy, Normative Ethics, Metaethics
Email: ct794@georgetown.edu
Jeffrey Tsoi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Philosophy. He studies theories of contemporary United States jurisprudence, specifically how democratic values should inform the judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions in the United States and transform the political institutions we now have. Also a Georgetown Law graduate, he currently serves as a Fellow at the University of Washington School of Law’s Civil Rights and Justice Clinic.
A. Abbiw Watson
BA Dickinson College, Philosophy
MA Georgetown University, Philosophy
Interests: Philosophy of Race, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Social Epistemology
Email: aw1089@georgetown.edu
Aramias (Ari) Watson is a Ph.D. candidate researching the persistence of anti-Black racism in the United States. His work focuses explicitly on anti-Black violence, approaching it as an ethical issue that necessitates engagement with various branches of philosophy, including political philosophy, philosophy of law, and social epistemology. Aramias aims to produce research that not only advances academic scholarship on the nature of political antagonisms but also contributes to the eradication of anti-Black racism.
YF Xu
BA College of Wooster
MA University of Chicago, Humanities
Interests: Philosophy of the Mind and Cognitive Science, Hermeneutics, Social Epistemology
Email: yx331@georgetown.edu
YF is from Shanghai, China, and joined the department in the fall of 2022. YF’s philosophical passion was born of a wish to articulate everything into a unified system. They have become aware that the establishment of such a system might neither be theoretically realizable nor practically important. What concerns YF now is how to bring effective disruptions to ideologies and meanwhile stay positive and active in life.
Outside of academics, YF is a culinary enthusiast who has served food to many people as well as won some competitions. You may also very likely find them working out at the gym or playing ball games.
Yo-ran Xiao Yang
BA Tufts University, MPhil, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Interests: Emotion, Virtue Ethics, Critical Theory, Phenomenology, Ordinary Languages Philosophy, Classical Chinese Philosophy
Email: oyy2@georgetown.edu
Yo comes from many places, and he likes to think about many things, in many ways. These days, though, he’s been trying to make sense of grief, and we might better organize and live it within the contemporary forms of life.
To that end, he finds the traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Existential Phenomenology, Ordinary Languages Philosophy, Jaeggian Critical Theory, and Cultural Anthropology especially helpful.
Also, and this is not unrelated, he likes poetry, film, and tennis. And food. And frogs.
Winson Zhou
BA University of Chicago, Physics & Philosophy
MA University of Chicago, Humanities
Interests: Epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, the history of philosophy, Buddhist thoughts, Eastern philosophy
Email: wz336@georgetown.edu
After 2 years spent in industry, Winson went back to academia and joined Georgetown’s philosophy Ph.D. program in the Fall of 2025. His philosophical interests revolve around epistemology and logic, unified by a focus on metaepistemological questions concerning the foundations of knowledge-yielding methodologies and their relationship to philosophical practice. Additionally, he aspires to explore comparative approaches to metaphilosophy through incorporating insights from non-Western philosophical traditions. Apart from philosophy, Winson cooks delicious food for his family everyday. He is also a great fan of Japanese anime and “soulslike” games.