Lauren Ashwell moved from her native New Zealand to the U.S. twenty-three years ago to do a Ph.D. at MIT. She now teaches at Bates College in Maine, with classes in philosophy, digital and computational studies, and gender and sexuality studies.
What do you do at the APA?
I’ve been on the Committee on Academic Careers and Placement since 2019 and the chair for the last three years; I’m also on the Virtual Programming Committee and the Committee on the Status and Future of the Profession, as well as on the board of the APA. I’ve really enjoyed being on the board with such thoughtful colleagues, and I’m happy to be passing on the leadership of the Academic Careers and Placement committee to Amy Berg, who (together with the rest of the committee) has some fantastic plans to help job-seekers.
What is your favorite part of your job?
Teaching our amazing undergraduates at Bates, so long as I don’t have to do any grading. (Reading their work and giving feedback, though, is fun!) They have such interesting responses to philosophical work, and it often helps me think about that work in a new light. They also come up with such a wide range of thesis topics, and that’s often a good excuse to learn something new. While I’ve supervised some theses in areas I’ve published on (dispositions, self-knowledge, and derogatory language), I’ve also supervised theses on trans phenomenology, on Russian language semantics, on the ethics of automation, and on heuristics.
What excites you about philosophy?
I started out in math and physics and soon realized that most of the things I was interested in there could also be thought about within philosophy—plus more. I love the chance to apply skills and knowledge to new questions and areas within philosophy. Although it is challenging to move between different debates because there is almost always a huge literature to get a handle on when you’re thinking about something new, teaching at a small college where I cover a large area of analytic philosophy (I’m the logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and language person, and I also share some responsibility for feminist and social philosophy) allows me to integrate my far-too-broad interests with my teaching.
What do you like to do outside work?
Running and hiking long distances. My partner and I just returned from Scotland where we hiked the John o’Groats trail on the northeast coast, averaging around eighteen miles a day. I like my vacations to either revolve around a marathon or around doing a multi-day trek. What kind of vacation is it if your feet don’t hurt a lot at the end of it?
What is your least favorite type of fruit and why?
Pretty much all fruit is untrustworthy. While it may look fine on the outside, it can be awful to bite into. I’m mostly not willing to take the risk even if there is a possible reward of deliciousness. Vegetables all the way.
What advice do you wish someone had given you?
Do more things that you’re not good at. I didn’t run or take language classes when I was younger because I was not “naturally” talented at either. I’m getting better at accepting risk and failure. (I’ve done improv at a fringe festival; I often choose karaoke songs that are out of my range; and I’m not a natural at giving good philosophy talks, either.) However, this is something I wish I had worked on earlier in my life. Perhaps then I would have become less risk-averse, and eat more fruit.
