I’m a phd candidate in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT. My dissertation develops a non-trivial semantics for counterpossible conditionals (counterfactuals with impossible antecedents), and extends that to talk or thought of impossibility more broadly. I also argue that convention-shifting is a semantic phenomenon in natural language, and give a two-dimensional semantics for it. New work is on collaborative storytelling in role playing games and a critical analysis of consequentialist arguments in support of thoroughbred racing.

Before coming to MIT, I completed my BA in Philosophy and Russian Language & Literature at Tulane. After working for two years for Tulane’s Center for Public Service, I got my JD and practiced indigent criminal defense in New Orleans. I was a law clerk with Southern Poverty Law Center, where I helped write a jail conditions lawsuit that resulted in a Federal Consent Decree with the Orleans Parish jail system, as well as a suit that was settled when the Confederate flag was removed from the courthouse—where the vast majority of defendants are Black—in Shreveport, Louisiana. During law school, I founded and ran a dog rescue in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, where I lived for six years. Sleeping Tree Pictures made a short documentary about our rescue efforts. Prior to college I studied creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. I spent a plurality of my years in New Orleans, but was born in Canberra, Australia, and spent my childhood mostly in Duluth, Minnesota.

Aside from Philosophy, I love hanging out with my dogs, Bezzle and Flop. I’m also a passionate d&d player and a semi-competent DM. I enjoy podcasts, true crime, and the New England winter. I live at the former Hillwood Morgans Farm in western Massachusetts with my mom, a non-philosopher who has somehow put up with philosophers for over 50 years. We share our farm with three horses: my ex-racehorse thoroughbred, Henry; our ex-barrel racer, Hannah; and our ex-Amish cart horse, Pete. I am a naturalized citizen of Red Sox Nation.