Helen is currently engaged in two broad research projects: First, developing a relational account of personal identity that is sensitive to grief experiences, in conversation with African accounts of personal identity. Second, applying her earlier work on the nature of insults to practical issues such as the insult expressed by sexual violence, slurs as a type of insult, and interesting uses of insults in fiction.
“The Excellent Woman” (forthcoming) in Figures, Edited by Sara Rushing and Karen DeVries. Bloomsbury.
“#MeToo and Insults” (forthcoming) in Sexual Violence and Philosophy, Edited by Georgi Gardiner and Micol Bez. Routledge.
“Slurs and Insults: A Reply to David Miguel Gray’s ‘Doxastic and Epistemic Sources of Offense for Slurring Terms’” (2025) Acta Analytica. DOI:
“‘From Behind the Shadow of her Curtains’: Pym’s Invisible Women” (2025) The Barbara Pym Society Newsletter. 30 (2).
"On Insults" (2018) Journal of the American Philosophical Association.
"Love and Death" (2018) in Heaven & Philosophy. Edited by Simon Cushing. Lexington Books. 137-51.
"Modeling Sex/Gender" (2017) Think: Philosophy for Everyone 46 (16): 79-92.
"Sex, Vagueness, and the Olympics" (2015) Hypatia 30 (4):708-24.
"Mental Causation" (2009) with Cei Maslen and Terry Horgan. In The Oxford Handbook of Causation. Edited by H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, and P. Menzies. Oxford.
"Jaegwon Kim" (2009) with Terry Horgan. In A Companion to Metaphysics, 2nd ed. Edited by J. Kim, E. Sosa and G. Rosenkrantz. Blackwell.
Regular Courses Taught
PH122 Philosophical Argument and Writing
PH226 Formal Logic
PH229 Philosophy of Language
PH321 Metaphysics
Committees & Governance
Faculty Review Committee (26-27)
Philosophy Hiring Committee (26)
Education
B.A., University of Akron, 2002 Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2011
