Former Kenan Graduate Fellow, researcher to teach ethics at University of Toronto

A former Kenan TA, Graduate Fellow and researcher with the Kenan Institute’s Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making Lab (MADLAB) and Rethinking Regulation program will spend the 2017-2018 academic year teaching ethics in Canada.

Aaron Ancell, who has been a part of research in civility in public discourse and co-authored a paper on regulation and democratic theory among other work, will act as the Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethics for the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. He’ll share his expertise in political philosophy and ethics through research and teaching two classes at the college.

“Kenan has been one of the most important parts of my experience at Duke,” Ancell said. “It’s easy to get lost in the particular questions, frameworks, and debates of one’s own discipline and to lose sight of how one’s research fits into the bigger picture, but my involvement with Kenan has left me with a much better view of that big picture.”

Ancell’s dissertation, “Public Unreason: Essays on Political Disagreement,” advances research on political disagreements informed by social epistemology and psychology. All four of Ancell’s dissertation committee members (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Allen Buchanan, Wayne Norman, and David Wong) have affiliation with the Kenan Institute. Ancell defends his dissertation this September.