People
Center Staff
Matthew J. Brown
Director
Boydston Professor of American Philosophy
- Phone:
- (618) 453-4347
- Email:
- matt.brown@siu.edu
- Related links:
Sunshine (Sunny) Heenen
Graduate Assistant
PhD Candidate in Philosophy; AOS: value theory, social and political philosophy, ethics, feminism, pragmatism.
- Email:
- sunshine.heenen@siu.edu
Harrison S. Jackson
Graduate Assistant
PhD Candidate in Philosophy; AOS: process philosophy, social and political philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology. MA in Philosophy, New School for Social Research.
- Email:
- harrison.jackson@siu.edu
- Related links:
Keyann Wilson
Graduate Assistant
MA student in Philosophy
- Email:
- keyann.wilson@siu.edu
Current Visiting Fellows
Siwen Yang
Visiting Fellow, September 2025 - February 2026
PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Science, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Project: Scientific Knowledge as Niche Construction: An Analysis Grounded in John Dewey’s Theory of Inquiry
- Email:
- thinkinyang@163.com
- Related links:
Marcello Ruta
Visiting Fellow, October - December, 2025
Privatdozent at Universität Bern
Project: Artistic Reconstruction: For a Deweyan Progressive Concept of Tradition
- Related links:
- Related links:
Affiliated Faculty
Kenneth Stikkers
CDS International Liason, Professor of Philosophy
- Email:
- kstikker@siu.edu
- Related links:
Sabrina Starnaman
Assistant Professor of Practice in Philosophy
- Email:
- sabrina.starnaman@siu.edu
- Related links:
Nicholas Guardiano
Associate Professor of Philosophy; Alwin C. Carus Archivist, Special Collections Research Center
- Related links:
Kristen Cameron
Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education and Curriculum & Instruction
- Email:
- kcameron@siu.edu
- Related links:
Previous Directors
Larry Hickman
Director 1993-2015
- Related links:
Jo Ann Boydston
Director, 1966-1992; Assistant Director 1961-1965
- Related links:
George E. Axtelle
Director, 1961-1965
Former Staff and Graduate Assistants
(In some cases the dates are approximate. Please send us corrections if you have them.)
Former Visiting Fellows
Fergus Selsdon Games
Visiting Fellow, January - March 2025
PhD Candidate in History, University of Cambridge
Project: Dewey’s Future: Progress and Democracy in American Thought, 1944-2000
Jin, Shi
Visiting Scholar, October 2023-October 2024
PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Fudan University
Project: Returning Back to Practical Living Experience: A Comparative Study of Dewey and Heidegger
- Email:
- jin160016@126.com
Zhang, Nan
Visiting Scholar, May 2022 - May 2023
PhD Candidate in Education, Beijing Normal University
Project: Research on the Relationships between John Dewey's Theories and the Trends of Educational Thoughts in Modern China
- Email:
- zhang_nan@mail.bnu.edu.cn