Darin DeWitt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches courses in positive political theory. He studies American politics with a focus on institutions, celebrity, and conspiracy theory politics. Thanks to The Expanse, he’ll pack a few portable lamps and water bottles on his maiden voyage to outer space.
Claire Field is a postdoctoral research fellow on the research project Varieties of Risk, based at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and her current research focuses on what makes risks reckless. She has also published on the epistemology of incoherence. In her spare time, she is compiling the system's first comprehensive rule book for the game Golgo—a recklessly ambitious project that is most likely doomed.
Max Gemeinhardt is a PhD candidate in chemistry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). Since an early age, the philosophy of science has been an interest to him when he began his academic journey many orbits ago. His research primarily deals with the devolvement of MRI contrast agents and new methodologies to improve MRI utility for medical imaging. He has been published in several papers and book chapters on topics within the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. When not busy with research or work, he is at home with his wife, three cats, carnivorous plants, and tarantula. Proudly displayed on his desk sits a model of the Roci next to the other great spaceships of the imagined future.
Margarida Hermida has a PhD in biology and is currently a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Bristol, UK. She works in philosophy of biology and has received a scholarship from the British Society for the Philosophy of Science for her project on the life and death of animals. She’d love to see more of the solar system, but with no Epstein drive, she’s probably stuck on Earth for the time being. Which is not such a bad thing, because Earth really is the best. And she’s not just saying that because she’s an Earther.
Caleb McGee Husmann is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina. His research interests include fiction and political theory, borderlands, Darwinian interventions in the social sciences, and policy narratives. In addition to his academic writing he has published two novels under the pseudonym C. McGee. He is 45 percent certain that he can beat Amos in an arm‐wrestling contest.
Leonard Kahn is an Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. He works on moral theory and applied ethics and often wishes he could swear as well as Chrisjen Avasarala.
Elizabeth Kusko is an Associate Professor of Political Science at William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although her research generally focuses upon the Narrative Policy Framework, she most recently co‐edited a volume entitled Exploring the Macabre, Malevolent, and Mysterious: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and co‐authored a chapter in that volume addressing Hannah Arendt's banality of evil in Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery.” She believes that Camina Drummer is the best character in all of science fiction and has fully embraced Drummer’s signature eyeliner look.
Tiago Cerqueira Lazier investigates the dynamics of human action and embedded meaning guiding people’s political behavior, particularly focusing on Hannah Arendt’s thought. He currently teaches at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Germany. As a good millennial, he also works on various projects at the intersection of philosophy, politics, literature, and technology. He is the co‐founder of Engajados Institute of Collaborative Technologies and an associate of the Research Institute for the Defense of Democracy of Piracicaba (IPEDD), Brazil. Together with the crew of the Rocinante, he has been learning over the last seasons that one can act but not defeat uncertainty.
R. S. Leiby is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Boston University. Her work deals primarily with the intersection of political and moral philosophy, with a particular emphasis upon issues of transitional justice. Like James Holden, her first order of business after a near‐death experience (and, to be honest, experiences more generally) is to locate the nearest coffee machine.
Stefano Lo Re earned his PhD in philosophy in 2019 from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Stirling, Scotland, and is presently a fellow of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs of the University of St Andrews (CEPPA). His research focuses on German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and currently he is working on applying the principles of Kant's political philosophy to outer space. He is an avid Misko and Marisko merch collector.
Andrew Magrath is the Academic Support Services Manager at Hillsborough Community College, Brandon Campus, where he occasionally still moonlights as a philosophy instructor. His interests include tutoring centers, analytic philosophy, Eastern thought, and listening to radio free slow zone. His office is easily recognizable by the Deep Space Nine poster on the door, and he secretly wishes he was as cool as Bobbie Draper.
Trip McCrossin teaches in the Philosophy Department at Rutgers University, where he works on the nature, history, and legacy of the Enlightenment, in philosophy and popular culture. Whenever a class goes well, he thinks of the last line on the plaque just inside the Roci: “A Legitimate Salvage.”
Jeffery L. Nicholas edited Dune and Philosophy and is author of Love and Politics: Persistent Human Desires as a Foundation for a Politics of Liberation. He is an associate professor at Providence College, mainly because Michael O’Neill (see below) didn’t quite tell the truth about how much snow Rhode Island gets. While he’d much rather be Joe Miller and is known as “the Fedora Guy” on campus, he’s more likely to be the angel on Holden’s shoulder acting as his conscience.
Michael J. O’Neill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Providence College in Providence, RI. His teaching and research interests include the philosophy of history, political philosophy, and philosophical aesthetics. He is not sure if “drinking like my enemy helps me think like my enemy,” but figures it is worth a try.
James S.J. Schwartz is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wichita State University where they specialize in the philosophy and ethics of space exploration. They are author of The Value of Science in Space Exploration, co‐editor with Linda Billings and Erika Nesvold of Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration (in preparation), and co‐editor with Tony Milligan of The Ethics of Space Exploration. You can learn more about their research at www.thespacephilosopher.space. In what the UNN now describes as an unfortunate accident, James was exposed to the protomolecule at an early age, and the work continues.
Sid Simpson is Perry‐Williams Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy and Political Science at the College of Wooster. His research focuses on late modern and contemporary political thought, continental philosophy, and critical theory. He’s published research on things like Nietzsche, the Frankfurt School, international relations theory, punishment, Frankenstein, and Black Mirror. While he generally thinks that throwing rocks at people is rude, he’s willing to make a few exceptions.
Pankaj Singh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, India. Although his formal research interests include philosophy of mind and existentialism, he also loves to write about pop culture and philosophy. He authored “Affordance‐based Framework of Object Perception