Department of Philosophy
Faculty & Staff
Kathleen Jewell
PhilosophySecretary
Phone: 902-420-5823
Email: kathleen.jewell@smu.ca
Fax: 902-491-6286
Room: MN508
Office Hours:
September 1 to May 30 - Mon to Fri - 8:00 am to 12 noon and 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
June 1 to August 31: Mon to Fri - 8:00 am to 12 noon and 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm

Scott Edgar, Chair
PhilosophyAssociate Professor
Phone: 902-420-5820
Email: scott.edgar@smu.ca
Room: MN523
Teaching: Early Modern Philosophy; Kant; Nineteenth-Century Philosophy; Critical Thinking
Publications: “The Limits of Experience and Explanation: F.A. Lange and Ernst Mach on Things in Themselves,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2013); “Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and a Cognitive Interpretation of the first Critique,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2010); “Hermann Cohen,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010); “Logical Empiricism, Politics, and Professionalism,” Science and Education (2009); “Paul Natorp and the Emergence of Anti-Psychologism in the Nineteenth Century,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2008)
Robert Ansell
PhilosophyAssistant Professor
Phone: 902-420-5819
Email: robert.ansell@smu.ca
Room: MN530
Degrees: B.A. (Cambridge), Ph.D. (Glasgow)
Teaching: Human Freedom; Philosophies of Life; Business Ethics
Publications: “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Multinational Corporations in the Third World” (co-author: W.L. Archer), University of New Brunswick Law Journal (1998)

Todd Calder
PhilosophyAssociate Professor
Phone: 902-420-5826
Email: todd.calder@smu.ca
On leave from Jan 1 2021 to June 1, 2021
Degrees: B.A. (Hons.) (Dalhouse), M.A. (Calgary), Ph.D. (Western)
Room: MN529
Office Hours:
Homepage: https://tccalderdotcom.wordpress.com/
Teaching: Ethics; Evil; Sex and Sexuality
Publications: https://tccalderdotcom.wordpress.com/research/

Shelagh Crooks
PhilosophyProfessor
Phone: 902-420-5824
Email: shelagh.crooks@smu.ca
Professor
Undergraduate Advisor and Graduate Coordinator
Degrees: B.A. (Hons.) (Saint Mary’s), M.A. (Dalhousie), Ph.D. (Edinburgh)
Room: MN526
Office Hours:
Teaching: Argumentation Theory; Philosophical Foundations of Education; David Hume; Critical Thinking; Ethics of Belief
Publications: “Teaching for Inquiry,” Paideia (2010); “Teaching for Argumentative Thought,” Teaching Philosophy (2009)

Lisa Gannett
PhilosophyProfessor
Phone: 902-420-5822
Email: lisa.gannett@smu.ca
Room: MN522
Office Hours:
Degrees: B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D. (Western)
Teaching: Scientific Method; Science and Society; Philosophical Issues in Feminism; Environmental Ethics; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Biology; Feminist Philosophy

John E. MacKinnon
PhilosophyAssociate Professor
Phone: 902-420-5821
Email: john.mackinnon@smu.ca
Room: MN532
Office Hours:
Degrees: B.A. (Hons.) (McGill), M.A. (Toronto), M.Phil. (Exeter), Ph.D. (Cambridge)
Teaching: Aesthetics; Aristotle and the Hellenists; Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Art; Kant; Philosophy and Literature; Philosophy and Film; Philosophy of History; Philosophy of Language
Publications: “Narrative Rhyme and the Good Life,” Philosophy and Literature (forthcoming); “Frank Sibley,” in Michael Kelley (ed.) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics [Second Edition] (Oxford University Press; 2014); “The Road to Wellnessville,” Philosophy and Literature (October 2013); “Spells of Trauma in Catherine Bush’s Minus Time,” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics (2010); Review of Douglas Walton’s Abductive Reasoning, Review of Metaphysics (2006); “Risk and Resilience in Catherine Bush’s Minus Time,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2006); “Law and Tenderness in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader,” Law and Literature (2004); “Crime, Compassion, and The Reader,” Philosophy and Literature (2003); “Aesthetic Supervenience: For and Against,” British Journal of Aesthetics (2001)

Mark Mercer
PhilosophyProfessor
Phone: 902-420-5825
Email: mark.mercer@smu.ca
On leave from September 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021
Room: MN524
Office Hours:
Home Page: http://professormarkmercer.ca/
Degrees: B.A. (Hons.), M.A. (Carleton), Ph.D. (Toronto)
Teaching: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy of Mind; Plato and the Presocratics
Publications: “Why Scholars Won’t Research Group Differences,” Academic Questions (2020); “Academic Freedom of Thought,” Prospero (2017); “Why Study Philosophy?”, Philosophy for the Curious: Why Study Philosophy (2015); “The New Old Atheism,” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review (2011); “In Defence of Believing Wishfully,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy (2010); “The Significance of Christmas for Liberal Multiculturalism,” Christmas: Philosophy for Everyone (2010); “Folk Psychology’s Epistemic Credentials,” Facta Philosophica (2007)

Carmel Forde
PhilosophyAssistant Professor
Phone: 902-420-5818
Email: carmel.forde@smu.ca
Room: MN525
Teaching: The Empiricists; Bioethics; Business Ethics; Ethics and the Law; Environmental Ethics; Political Philosophy; Critical Thinking
Research: Developmental change; learning; philosophical anthropology; critical psychology; development of consciousness and self-consciousness in ontogeny; philosophy of nature; labour and union issues

Jeff Spring
PhilosophyPart-time Instructor
Email: jeff.spring@smu.ca
Adam Woodcox
PhilosophyPart-time Instructor
Email: adam.woodcox@gmail.com
Emily Douglas
PhilosophyPart-time Instructor
Email: emily.douglas@mail.mcgill.ca

Renxiang Liu
PhilosophyPart-time Instructor
Email: renxiang.liu@mail.mcgill.ca
Teaching: Phenomenology, Existentialism, Continental Philosophy, Philosophy of Time
Research: Ontology of time from a phenomenological perspective (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty)
Publications: “Three Interpretations of Freedom in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness,” The Humanistic Psychologist (2021, forthcoming); “The ‘Magical World’ of Emotions and Its Triumph: On the Ontological Inconsistency in Sartre’s Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions,” Sophia (2020); “Sartre’s Godless Theology: Dualism Monism and Its Temporal Dimensions,” Open Theology (2019)
Wayne Grennan
PhilosophyProfessor Emeritus
Email: wgrennan@eastlink.ca
Degrees: B.Eng. (NSTC), B.A. (Hons.), M.A. (Dalhousie), D.Phil. (Oxford)
Publications: Informal Logic: Issues and Techniques (1997); Argument Evaluation (1984)