Heartfelt congratulations to our colleague, Julia Nefsky, who has been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, effective July 1, 2021.
We could not be happier for her!
Julia Nefsky joined the department in 2012, after receiving her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She works primarily in the field of moral philosophy and has written extensively on the challenge of understanding our individual reasons and obligations in contexts of ‘collective impact’ -- contexts in which groups together have a major impact, but any one individual's contribution seems negligible. This work contributes to her broader research interest in how to think about ourselves and our decisions, as individuals, in the face of major large-scale problems, like climate change and global poverty.
As is evident in her work, Nefsky loves thinking about philosophical puzzles. In recent joint work with Sergio Tenenbaum, she explores a puzzle about future-directed decisions and autonomy, and she is currently working on questions at the intersection of ethics and the philosophy of action, concerning how to think about the agency of others. In her new paper, “Misery Loves Company” (Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics), she presents a new puzzle for thinking about our moral characters.
Julia teaches undergraduate courses in ethics at UTSC, including Introduction to Ethics, Environmental Ethics, and a fourth-year seminar on War and Morality. Her teaching also includes leading graduate seminars at the St. George campus.