Patience in Adversity: Philosophy & Religion Early-Career Fellows

Philosophy & Religion Early-Career Fellows

Patience in Adversity Philosophy & Religion Early-Career Fellows are doctoral students and early-career postdocs interested in the moral psychology of patience. Through a competitive application process, fellows were selected to participate in a week-long seminar, where they deepened their understanding of patience and related concepts while engaging with faculty whose research focuses on patience, moral psychology, self-control, and emotion regulation.

Each fellow received a $5,000 honorarium and continues to receive support throughout the fall 2026 semester through faculty mentoring and online writing workshops. Fellows are also eligible to submit a patience-related manuscript for consideration for a $2,000 paper prize. Two paper prize winners will be announced in February 2027.

Early-Career Fellows:

Katherine Caldwell, City University of New York

Katherine Caldwell is a philosophy PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research centers on transformative experiences and the philosophy and moral psychology of religious experience. Her dissertation explores questions about what she calls transformative moral experiences — experiences that change one’s moral values or ethical identity in a radical way. She’s particularly interested in the moral psychology of religious transformations, both conversions and de-conversions, as types of transformative moral experiences.

Growing up in Appalachia, Katherine witnessed firsthand how religious conviction shapes every dimension of life — sometimes in ways that seem incomprehensible to outsiders. Her home county was once populated with churches where congregants handle serpents and drink poison as acts of faith. There, she learned that people's deepest ethical commitments aren't abstract philosophical or theological positions but lived realities that structure their entire worlds. These experiences instilled in her a mixed feeling of profound respect and suspicion about the power of moral transformation, as well as an endless curiosity about the nature of such radical transformations and how they occur.

Tessa Finley, Brown University

Tessa Finley is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies and a Collaborative Humanities Fellow at the Cogut Institute. Her work engages with questions of self-formation, drawing upon perspectives in the philosophy of religion, art and literature, psychoanalysis, and political theory. She is interested in the transformation of moral thought in response to various historical expressions of secularization, skepticism, scientism, and atheism. Her dissertation research takes an interdisciplinary approach to the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of attention, and seeks to multiply and enrich the possibilities of thinking through atheism and divine absence. She holds a BA in Religious Studies and Biology from Pomona College and a MFA in Creative Writing from Oregon State University. Prior to coming to Brown, she taught composition at Tulane University.

Emily King, Brown University

Emily King is a PhD student in Religious Studies at Brown University. Her work is rooted at the intersection of religion, literature, and ethics. She holds a BA in English literature from Stanford University and an MDiv from the University of Chicago.

Isabelle Laurenzi, Yale University

Isabelle Laurenzi is a scholar and writer, currently at work on a book about the politics and ethics of ending intimate relationships. More broadly, her research explores the intersections of political philosophy, ethics, religion, and culture, especially as they pertain to feminist thought. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University (2025) and an A.B., summa cum laude, in Religion from Princeton University (2015). Her work has been supported by a Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship. Her first peer-reviewed article appears in Political Theory. As an organizer for The Philosopher’s online event series, she occasionally hosts book talks on recent works in feminist philosophy and political thought. She resides in New Haven, CT.

Mukund Maithani, Harvard University

Mukund Maithani is currently a first-year PhD student in philosophy at Harvard University. Previously, he did his undergraduate work in philosophy at Ashoka University in India and an MA in philosophy at Simon Fraser University in Canada. His research interests mainly lie in topics across and at the interface of philosophy of mind, ethics, and Buddhist philosophy. A common thread that underlies these interests is a normative concern with various aspects of experience, including perception, emotions, attention, and imagination. Mukund also enjoys thinking about topics pertaining to aesthetics, pragmatism, ethics of technology, existentialism, and Indian philosophy more generally

Austin McCoy, Baylor University

Austin McCoy is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the department of philosophy at Baylor University where he earned his PhD in August 2025. His primary research interests are at the intersections of ethics, the philosophy of action, and the philosophy of religion. He is especially interested in the connection between good action, good motivation, and good people. In his dissertation he explored what it means to do the right thing for the right reason and its connection to virtue. Before coming to Baylor, Austin completed an MA in Theology. In his free time, Austin enjoys drinking coffee or bourbon and losing online chess games.

Lauren Roe, University of Southern California

Lauren Roe is a first year Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Southern California interested in ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology. She completed an MA in philosophy at Virginia Tech (2025) and her BA at Baylor University (2021). Before pursuing her graduate studies, she worked in higher education administration and the non-profit sector. She is currently thinking about the nature of love and forgiveness, the ontology of consent, and how to get aggregative outcomes out of non-aggregative moral theories. Outside of philosophy, she enjoys flamenco dance, board game nights with her cohort, spending time with her cat, and exploring the food culture of LA. As a foodie from Texas, she is working to settle the age-old question: is tex-mex or cali-mex better?

Katarina von Kühn, Princeton Theological Seminary

Katarina von Kühn is a third-year doctoral candidate in Theology, Ethics, and Politics at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in Christian Ethics. She earned degrees from Baylor University (BA in Religion), Duke Divinity School (MDiv), and Yale Divinity School (STM), and has served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. Her dissertation focuses on the nature and function of blame in the Christian moral life, using recent work in moral philosophy to argue that blaming well is a vital antecedent step to forgiving well. Her other research focuses on virtues in relationship to structural injustice, constrained moral agency and complicity, as well as gratitude. After completing her PhD, Katarina hopes to teach and mentor students in a university or seminary context. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her four-year-old daughter, Zooey.

Adam Waggoner, Purdue University

Adam Waggoner is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. His current research focuses on questions about the nature and value of emotions, especially in ancient Greek philosophy. He also has interests in self-control, the history of slavery, moral learning, and virtue ethics.

Before coming to Purdue, Waggoner received his PhD in Philosophy and MA in Greek from the University of Michigan, where he wrote a dissertation about Aristotle’s account of passions. Before that, he received his MA in Philosophy from Western Michigan University. Outside of philosophy, Waggoner enjoys running, cooking, watching baseball, and spending time with his family.

Philosophy & Religion Summer Seminar (June 2026)

The Patience in Adversity Summer Seminar was held June 22-27, 2026 at the University of Notre Dame. The week-long seminar brought together doctoral students and early-career postdocs in philosophy and religion to explore patience in adversity. Participants engaged in cutting-edge research from philosophy, religion, anthropology, and psychology. Through daily sessions, discussions, mentoring, and feedback on their own writing projects, participants had the opportunity to deepen their understanding of patience and develop research in the field.

Seminar Senior Leaders

Dr. Anne Jeffrey , Seminar Philosophy Lead, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Baylor University
Dr. Fannie Bialek, Seminar Religion Lead, Assistant Professor at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University St. Louis 
Dr. Sarah Schnitker, Seminar Psychology Lead, Professor of Psychology, Baylor University

Seminar Senior Scholars

Senior Scholars presented their research each morning of the Seminar, followed by roundtable discussions that gave participants the opportunity to engage with the scholars, ask questions, and explore ideas related to patience in adversity.

Dr. Alda Balthrop-Lewis, Associate Professor of Religion, Florida State University
Dr. Sukaina Hirji, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Basit Kareem Iqbal, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology & Associate Member in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University
Dr. Denise Vigani, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University

Seminar Senior Mentors

Senior Mentors spent the afternoons leading writing workshops and offering guidance on developing fellows' research, writing, and careers as emerging scholars.

Dr. Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Professor of Philosophy & Director of the Brady Scholars Program, Northwestern University
Dr. Timothy Pawl, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas
Dr. Maria Waggoner, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University
Dr. Evan Westra, Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy, Purdue University

 The Patience in Adversity Summer Seminar was generously supported by Templeton Religion Trust, Baylor University, and University of Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion.