Fall 2025 Graduate Student News & Accomplishments

PhD student Alex Asay received the R. Scott Kretchmar Student Essay Award from the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport (IAPS) for “Subcultures and Self-Determination: Meaningful Narratives and Policy in Sport.” In late-August he presented the essay at the IAPS Annual Meeting held in Odense, Denmark in August. While at the conference, Asay also participated in the “Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Bernard Suits’ Legacy” workshop, where he presented “Lusory Aesthetics: Utopian Sport as Participatory Art” with fellow PhD student Shagun Sharma. 

PhD student and research assistant Max Barton attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP30 in Brazil in November, joining hundreds of US participants including scholars, scientists, as well as state and major city government representatives who are attending the conference in the absence of any US federal government representation in the global climate change negotiations.

PhD Student Daniel Deweese’s article, “Freud’s Compass: A Critical Defense of Oedipus Complex,” was published in the Fall 2025 issue of the European Journal of Psychoanalysis. In this article, Daniel draws on his experience as a practicing psychoanalyst and researcher to examine the enduring relevance of Freud's Oedipus complex in contemporary psychoanalysis and culture. He critiques the notion that we have overcome the Oedipus complex as a philosophical and clinical tool.

PhD student Hadley Grecia was part of the planning committee for the  Student Philosophy in the South (SPITS) conference, hosted by the Philosophy Graduate Student Association at UGA in September. At the conference, Grecia gave comments on Joseph Aron's paper "Walking on Eggs’ Shells: Internal Maps and Ameliorative Womanhood.”

PhD student Xuechen Guo attended the Mid-South Philosophy Conference held in March in Rhodes, Tennessee where she presented the paper, "Heidegger's Thought of Understanding: An Approach to Taking Care of the Maginalized People.” She also attended the SPITS conference at UGA, presenting "Evocative Objects and Trauma: the Possibility of Recalling the Emotion of Pleasure."

PhD student Danielle Kotrla served as committee chair of inaugural Student Philosophy in the South (SPITS) conference hosted by the Philosophy Graduate Student Association at UGA in September.

Quentin Murphy was awarded the Joseph Bertram Gittler Fellowship , and presented the paper "Why Thrasymachus Ignores Clitophon, with Help from Theaetetus" at UGA's inaugural SPITS conference. 

PhD student Nathan Pagel presented a paper, "Varieties of Aesthetic Ignorance and the Value Thereof” at the Rocky Mountain American Society for Aesthetics 2025 meeting in Sante Fe, New Mexico in July. 

PhD student Shagun Sharma attended the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport (IAPS) Annual Meeting held in Odense, Denmark in August where she presented the paper “Lusory Aesthetics: Utopian Sport as Participatory Art” with fellow PhD student Alex Asay and participated in the workshop “Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Bernard Suits’ Legacy.” She received a travel award from the IAPS for this conference. In October, Sharma provided comments at the 83rd annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Baltimore, Maryland. 

PhD candidate Rissa Willis was recently awarded the Joseph Bertram Gittler Fellowship to assist with their dissertation completion. Willis also attended the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport (IAPS) Annual Meeting held in Odense, Denmark where they presented a paper called "The Carpenter in Utopia" as part of the "Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy" workshop. Additionally, Willis also presented the paper, "The Epistemic Value of Games" at the IAPS conference. Willis also gave comments at both the Southern Aesthetics Workshop, held at UGA in September and the annual American Society of Aesthetics 83^rd Annual Meeting held in Baltimore, Maryland in October and attended the SPITS conference at UGA hosted by the Philosophy Graduate Student Association. Willis also attended the British Society of Aesthetics /Warwick Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts workshop on aesthetic community hosted by Warwick University and Auburn University in Warwick, UK in June. 

PhD student Mingxi Xu gave a commentary on Christopher Bartel’s “Befriending Videogame Characters” at the 2025 Southern Aesthetics Workshop hosted at UGA in September

PhD student Guillermo Zapata participated in the NovelEco symposium this summer in Dublin, Ireland and commented on Tobias Romei’s paper, “On Gardiner’s Global Constitutional Convention” at the International Society for Environment Ethics (ISEE) 22^nd Annual Summer Meeting held in Missoula, Montana in June. Zapata also commented on fellow UGA student Daniel Deweese’s paper, “Fanon Defended Against His Devotees” at the SPITS conference held at UGA in September.