Katherine Valde, PhD

Lecturer

Katherine Valde is a Lecturer of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from Boston University in 2019, defending a dissertation under the supervision of Alisa Bokulich. Before joining the Loyola faculty, Katherine was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina for five years.

Katherine believes that part of doing philosophy is engaging the world around her in the rigor and depth of philosophical thought. She seeks to connect all her students to the value of this practice, and enable them to understand how philosophical thought can enrich their lives - no matter their particular interests or professional goals.

Katherine's research interests take inspiration from her undergraduate education in biology and neuroscience. Her time both in the classroom and working in a neuropharmacology lab investigating the effects of alcohol and methylphenidate hydrochloride (Ritalin) on flash-evoked potentials recorded from the visual cortex and superior colliculus of chronically implanted rats, drove her to have profound questions about how science worked, and to pursue graduate study in the philosophy of science. She believes that philosophy and science work best in connection with one another, and she is interested in how science and philosophy can work together to ask important questions. Katherine's interest in feminist philosophy of science has led to larger thematic projects on the concept of neutrality, why it is important to us so many different domains, and its connections to what we take ourselves to know and to social power.

Research Interests

Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Feminist Philosophy, Non-western Philosophy (Buddhist and Hindu Philosophy)