HELEN LUO - PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR

MCROBERTS SECONDARY SCHOOL ALUMNUS

In the beginning of my undergraduate studies my focus was on Political Science and French, with the ultimate goal of pursuing a career in international diplomacy – however, my time at the NATO field school program at SFU informed me that I was ill-suited for employment of this nature. This coincided with my realization that my primary interest in Political Science was actually grounded in theoretic and prescriptive analytical concerns. This led to my declaring a Philosophy major, and deciding to pursue an MA, and eventually a PhD, with a fairly concrete ambition of leading a career in academia and teaching.

My intuition is that many early-career academics enter the field with ample interest in their research projects, but not necessarily any specific interest in teaching and instruction. My advice to anyone interested in becoming a professor is to seriously consider their love for the pedagogical element of the job – which will realistically occupy most of the working hours. While employment at a prestigious institution will depend on one’s research output and publications – one’s job satisfaction and daily quality of life will be highly contingent in one’s actual aptitude for and enjoyment of teaching. Beyond the pedagogy, research in Philosophy is fairly varied, depending on the specific branch or specialization. A fairly regular feature of work for most philosophers is the independent reading of publications from other philosophers and academics, but a lot of collaboration takes place in the field as well. Almost all published work in philosophy goes through rigorous processes of peer review and feedback, either informally through close colleagues or through professional conference presentations.

Students nearing the completion of an MA will typically have a handful of primary research interests, a few familiar secondary topics that support the primary research area, and perhaps one or two unrelated tertiary interests. In my case, I consider myself a value theorist, with primary research projects in normative ethics, philosophy of law, and political theory, and secondary interests in social epistemology and aesthetics. My tertiary interest is in classical Chinese philosophy, specifically the advent and evolution of Buddhist thought in mainland China. All this to say – professional philosophers have a fairly large latitude and freedom in pursuing research topics of their interest, and having an interdisciplinary background is an important way of broadening the horizon one’s philosophical inquiries. As I like to think of it – there is no information that is entirely devoid of philosophical implications, and so any type of intellectual engagement with the world can be understood from a philosophical framework!

Feel free to contact me @ helen_luo@sfu.ca