is currently pursuing a doctorate in the Philosophy Department at University College London, supervised by V茅ronique Munoz-Dard茅. Since 2017, Fischer has also been teaching at UCL and was a Visiting Student Researcher at Princeton University in spring 2020. Her research focuses on normative ethics and political philosophy. She describes her project, "The Weight of Numbers in Social Policymaking," as follows:
"Most people believe that, given equal costs, we should do more rather than less good. Indeed, the claim that we have a pro tanto duty to maximize the good underpins several popular approaches to individual action and state resource distribution, including healthcare and disaster response. In my research, I argue that the common belief that individuals have a pro tanto duty to maximize the good is misguided and assert that moral theories which endorse such a duty fail to align with common-sense intuitions and our moral commitments." One of her research articles was recently published in Philosophy (2021).
completed his PhD at the University of Chicago in 2019 with a dissertation titled "The Movement is Everything: Radical Kantianism and the Ideal of Emancipation in Modern German Political Thought." From 2019 to 2021, he was an Early Career Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of G枚ttingen. His project, "Radical Kantianism and the Ideal of Emancipation," aims to uncover a tradition of Kantian political thought from the 19th and 20th centuries that advocated for robust ideals of social and economic emancipation to be achieved through collective popular agency and social reforms. Levine traces the history of radical Kantianism from its roots in Kant's political philosophy to its reception and reinvention during successive crises in Germany: from the early 19th century, through its socialist revival after 1848, to its pivotal role in debates within the early SPD, and finally to the First World War and the early Weimar Republic. According to Levine, engaging with the history of Kantian socialism can deepen and enrich important debates in ethics, the theory of ideals, and social transformation. A recent research article of his appeared in Political Theory (2021).
is completing her PhD in Political Theory at Yale University in the summer semester of 2021. She previously earned a bachelor's degree in law and social theory with honors from Amherst College. Following that, she worked as an intern and research fellow on land reform, customary law, and socioeconomic rights at the Legal Resources Centre in Cape Town, South Africa's largest public interest law clinic, which litigates constitutional and human rights cases. Her project, "A Political Theory of Exhaustion," reconstructs the centrality of the concept, specter, and experience of exhaustion in debates about social transformation in the 20th century. Engaging with the works of Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon, Siegel identifies exhaustion as a core feature of the phenomenology of action and its frustrations. From this premise, she rethinks the role of critique in mediating and understanding political disappointment. According to Siegel, the history surrounding the concept of exhaustion is a critical challenge for Critical Theory. Her project draws on research interests in continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, and legal theory, with a focus on South African jurisprudence. Her work has been published in PhiloSOPHIA (forthcoming), Theoria (2015), and the South African Journal on Human Rights (2015).
