Staff

Jonathan Wren

Dr Jonathan Wren is a research assistant with CEPL at University College Dublin and is currently lecturing in Applied Ethics with the School of Philosophy. He is also part of the CEPL team working with the Thinking Changes project which engages in building philosophical discussions concerning non-violence, peace and reconciliation in community groups across the island of Ireland. Building on research conducted for the Thinking About Home CEPL event in 2023, he is developing a research project which focuses upon the phenomenology of home and housing. His research interests include post-Kantian European philosophy, (especially French and German 20th century thought), classical and critical phenomenology, critical theory, feminist theory and contemporary political theory. More broadly, he is interested in the different ways in which theorists engage with the theme of community in their approaches to examine classical philosophical, political and social concerns.

Laura Jane Nanni

Dr. Laura Jane Nanni is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in the area of phenomenology. Her research challenges prevailing philosophical accounts of self and personhood by developing an innovative phenomenological understanding of the self as ‘porous’ through a reconstruction of Edmund Husserl’s work. Her research promotes a renewed way of engaging with Husserlian phenomenology that counters traditional critical readings, and has implications concerning questions of identity, self and personhood for such fields as ethics, legal theory, and the medical humanities. She is currently extending this research into the field of critical and applied phenomenology concerning infant-maternal relations, and the phenomenology of the pregnant self. She contributes to CEPL research projects and public-facing activities such as the Irish and International Young Philosopher Awards (IYPA) and philosophy training programs.

Alessandro Guardascione

Doctoral Student

Alessandro Guardascione is an Irish Research Council Scholar and PhD student in the UCD School of Philosophy working on a project in the philosophy of psychiatry, entitled, “Values and Selfhood in Psychopathology”. His research focuses on contemporary person-centred approaches to mental health care that explore the role of values in psychiatric classification and clinical decision-making. The project aims to investigate conceptual models of mental disorders that integrate with the neuro-biological paradigms of patients’ active role in shaping symptoms, influencing the development of their disorders and the outcome of psychiatric therapy.

Aisling Phipps

Aisling Phipps is a doctoral researcher and College of Social Sciences and Law Research Scholar in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin. Her primary research interests include phenomenological psychopathology and philosophy of psychiatry. Her project, titled “Who Am I? A Phenomenology of Identity Disturbance in Borderline Personality Disorder”, is inspired by her own lived experience and focuses on a patient-centred approach to understanding the disorder. The aim of her research is to bridge the gap between clinical and philosophical perspectives of mental illness by exploring themes of selfhood, identity, and the body. Aisling is involved with both the Thinking Changes project and the Irish and International Young Philosopher Awards.

Denise Kelly

Denise Kelly is an Irish Research Council funded doctoral scholar in the UCD School of Philosophy. Her PhD project is entitled What about Phobias? A Phenomenological Investigation of Social Phobias and Anxiety. It seeks to identify the distinguishing criteria that single out phobic disorders as a group in clinical diagnosis and trouble their categorization via an exploration of their lived experience. Finding intentionality to be at the crux of phobic disorders, she argues that social phobias do not properly fit the categorization of phobias as they are ontological rather than ontical in nature. Her research methods are interdisciplinary, utilizing existentialism and phenomenology, feminist philosophy, as well as sociology and psychology. Her interests broadly encompass the study of ‘outsiders’ through the themes of intersubjectivity, mood, and home. She has researched and published in areas such as mental illness, belonging, and solitary confinement.

Roxane Pret Théodore

Doctoral Student

Roxane Pret Théodore is an Irish Research Council doctoral scholar, in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin. Since 2022, she has chaired the UCD Minorities and Philosophy Chapter. Her research builds on feminist philosophy, specifically vulnerability theories and care ethics (Butler, Cavarero), and classical works of critical social and political philosophy (Habermas, Arendt), to develop an alternative model of politics based on a theoretical reframing of the concept of vulnerability. The research aims to rupture traditional categories in politics and open a more democratic space for traditionally marginalized and underrepresented groups. In collaboration with Dr. Danielle Petherbridge, Roxane helped organise and presented at the CEPL conference, The Ethics and Politics of Vulnerable Populations: Questioning Forms of Paternalism, Policing and Governance, held at University College Dublin in May 2023.

Natalia Burakowska

Doctoral Student