Personal

I currently live in San Francisco, CA with my partner Christine Ball-Blakely (a wonderful attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund), our dog Dunkel (a delightfully sweet though painfully shy dachshund that we adopted from Small Breed Rescue of East Tennessee), and our cat Tolstoy (a boisterous yet cuddly kid that we adopted from the Regional Animal Services of King County).

Outside of philosophy, my interests include playing basketball with colleagues; catching movies with Christine; attending music festivals (especially Big Ears, an East TN gem!); biking around the city; and going for walks with Dunkel and Tolstoy in their stroller. I also spend plenty of time running fantasy basketball leagues and reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) my favorite fantasy series. I’m particularly fond of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen and Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings. 

I have, at least for a Philosophy PhD student, a relatively non-traditional background, one that has informed much of my teaching and research. I am a first-generation college student from East Tennessee. Like many members of my family, I did not graduate high school, instead earning my GED before enrolling at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. Here I met many incredible teachers who changed my life and instilled in me not only a love for learning but also for teaching.

My academic journey has been circuitous. After finishing my bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee, I took several years before applying to graduate school. Fear of the GRE looms large for those without a strong high school background! I was fortunate enough to be accepted at the University of Washington in 2011. I entered expecting to study epistemology but quickly fell in love with social and political philosophy. 

During my second year at UW, my mom was diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer. Shortly after, my partner and I decided to move back to Knoxville. I applied to and was accepted at the University of Tennessee, which allowed me to continue my philosophical education during this period. I worked with David Reidy, gaining an appreciation for the value of careful exegesis and began working on John Rawls. I wrote and defended a prospectus on Rawlsian ideal theory and global justice, with much help from a fantastic committee. However, as I was preparing my prospectus my mom passed away.

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being my growing engagement with immigration justice and the discovery that I still had two years of funding at UW, I transferred back in 2019 to finish my degree. With the help of Michael Blake, José Jorge Mendoza, and Desiree Lim, my growing interest in immigration has developed into a research project and a dissertation.