My research interests are mostly in metaphysics and the philosophy of science,  with connections to the philosophy of mind, social philosophy, and the history of philosophy. My dissertation contained papers on properties, grounding, and the persistence conditions of social groups. New work concerns the metaphysics of the social world and the philosophy of history.

Published:
"Grounding and Properties" Inquiry (2025)
Basic claim: Grounding is not governed by primitive laws of metaphysics but flows from the natures of properties; properties confer powers to ground.
Penultimate draft (Please cite published version)

"A New Paradigm in Social Ontology" Metascience (2024)
A book review of Åsa Burman's Nonideal Social Ontology. Read here.

"Are There Really Social Causes?" Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2023)
Basic claim: It is possible to defend the reality of social causes from a serious objection from extrinsicality, but only if we go big: genuine social causation happens at the level at which social properties are intrinsic.
Penultimate draft (Please cite published version)

“How Groups Persist” Synthese (2021)
Basic claim: Social groups persist through time by having instantaneous stages at different times related by a counterpart relation.
Penultimate draft (Please cite published version)

Social groups offer interesting examples for the metaphysics of persistence. In 1943, the Eagles and the Steelers combined to form a team affectionately known as the "Steagles". They split again the following year, but both teams consider the Steagles part of their record. Image source: www. philadelphiaeagles.com

Work in progress:
A paper on Rosen’s account of real definition (draft available on request)
A paper arguing against fundamental laws of metaphysics that connect ground to grounded (draft available on request)
A couple papers on historical presentism and the role of politics and anachronism in historiography 

---