Faculty Fellows

Current Faculty Fellows

Tiffany Zhu

Tiffany Zhu is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of California Irvine. Her interdisciplinary work investigates the ethics of generative AI, particularly the ways large language models and image generators portray groups of people and describe social reality.

In a work in progress, she evaluates how language models respond to prompts containing generic generalizations such as “Do immigrants hold lower paying jobs?” She proposes algorithmic design and AI-human communicative strategies to combat issues of overcensorship and undue minimization of structural inequities. She also advocates for harnessing the power of AI to promote values of empathy and justice.

She is a Graduate Fellow in the NSF-funded project, Generics in Context: Examining mental biases and resources in social and science communication and learning. She also works in social and applied epistemology, particularly on collective hypocrisy and distrust. She has presented her work at the American Philosophical Association, Society for Philosophy and Psychology, International Social Ontology Society, and the International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society.

Cory Aragon

Cory Aragon earned his Ph.D at the University of Colorado, Boulder, taking positions at Dickinson College and Concordia College before becoming Assistant Professor of Philosophy at ��88��.

His research focuses on questions of , both material and epistemic, and he works primarily in the fields of contemporary social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, critical philosophy of race, and global justice. He teaches courses at CPP including Social and Political Philosophy, Global Justice, Race and Racism, and Ethics, Environment, and Society, and he taught CCEP’s 2019-2020 Ethics & Policy Seminar on .

His recent publications include “Global Gender Justice and Epistemic Oppression: A Response to an Epistemic Dilemma” (Feminist Philosophy Quarterly) and, with Alison Jaggar, “Agency, Complicity, and the Responsibility to Resist Structural Injustice” (Journal of Social Philosophy).

Brady Collins

received his Ph.D in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA in Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Having spent several years as a , much of his teaching and research is focused on Los Angeles, though he has also conducted research in Barcelona, Tokyo, and Shanghai. His areas of expertise are in community and economic development, urban politics, housing policy, and ethnic enclaves. He serves on the Board of the Directors for the , where he provides research support to city and statewide campaigns to further housing equity and workers’ rights.

Brady’s current research investigates the politics of housing development and homelessness services implementation in Los Angeles. He teaches courses on public administration, public policy, qualitative methods, and urban governance in Los Angeles.

Désirée Lim

Désirée Lim is the Catherine Shultz Rein Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Penn State's , as well as Research Associate at the Rock Ethics Institute. She is also an affiliate of and a Visiting Research Fellow at the . Before joining Penn State, she was a postdoctoral fellow at, and completed her doctorate at King’s College London.

Lim’s primary research interests lie in contemporary political philosophy, with a special focus on questions about migration, citizenship, and global justice. She also has developing interests in the philosophy of race, decolonial thought, and social epistemology. Her first monograph, Immigration and Social Equality: The Ethics of Skill-Selective Immigration Policies (Oxford University Press) argues that social equality has a universal scope, and that non-citizens are entitled to be treated as social equals. Using this framework, she advances a distinctive critique of existing immigration policies. Her second book project, tentatively titled Internal Restrictions on Movement: A Reconsideration, is in progress.

Shonn Haren

Shonn Haren has been a Research and Instruction Librarian at ��88�� since 2016. He received a Master of Arts in History from the University of California, Riverside in 2010, and a Master of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University in 2013. Prior to coming to ��88��, he worked for 10 years as a student cataloger and later library clerk in the UC Riverside Libraries, and then spent 2 years as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas.

Since 2017, Professor Haren has focused on Misinformation, with a particular emphasis on Fake News, Urban Legends, and Conspiracy Theories. He has given several on-campus workshops on the subject and was part of a panel presentation on Fake News at the 2018 California Academic Research Libraries Conference.

In his spare time, he enjoys calligraphy, watercolors, scale modeling and is learning to do some basic woodworking.

Prior Faculty Fellows

Michael Woo

was . He was the first trained urban planner and the first Asian American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, representing Hollywood and surrounding neighborhoods for eight years before giving up his seat to run for Mayor of Los Angeles in 1993. He also was appointed to serve on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission for six years during which he was a leader in raising the health and social equity effects of residents in new projects near freeways breathing polluted freeway air. Woo's experience in housing includes protecting affordable housing in the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan, providing initial support for the Hollywood Community Housing Corporation, backing the controversial La Brea-Franklin low-income family housing project, and heading the Los Angeles office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a leading national nonprofit financial intermediary providing funds for affordable housing and economic development in low-income neighborhoods. He has recently written about . He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Urban Studies from UC Santa Cruz and his Master of City Planning degree from UC Berkeley.

Laureen Hom

Laureen Hom is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at ��88��. She received her PhD in Planning, Policy, and Design with an emphasis in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine and an MPH in Sociomedical Sciences, Urbanism and the Built Environment concentration at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests are at the intersection of Ethnic Studies, urban studies, and public policy. Her scholarship examines the intersections of race in understanding place-based activism and community formations in ethnic spaces in Southern California. Her published work has covered topics related to urban Chinatowns, Asian American placemaking, urban and racial politics, community organizations and organizing, community development, and gentrification.

Nicole Lambrou

Nicole’s work focuses on the politics of climate resilience and how they inform urban environmental transformations. Her research documents the work of planners, engineers, designers, ecologists, and everyday urban dwellers in addressing extreme climate events, and explores the values and spatial imaginaries that drive their efforts. Nicole formed a non-profit, , to take on projects framed by this research and to work with communities facing climate risks. Currently, tinkercraft is involved with a number of initiatives in Wilmington, Los Angeles, that address environmental and social justice through design and advocacy work. Nicole is an architect, urban designer, and researcher with experience in designing and building initiatives for public space. She received an M.Arch. from Yale University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her current research looks at how exposure, social vulnerability, and adaptive capacity of populations facing wildfire risk in California are assessed.

Marcos Scauso

Marcos S. Scauso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal. Poly., Pomona. His research lies at the intersection of International Relations and decoloniality, with a concentration on Indigenous voices in post-colonial Latin America, issues of intersectionality, and colonial legacies. Marcos Scauso holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, with a primary focus on International Relations and secondary interests in Political Theory, from the University of California, Irvine. He has directed two about Indigenous activisms in Argentina and Bolivia, which inspired his book: This book builds on extensive fieldwork in Bolivia to discuss Indigenous voices that provide new pathways for reimagining how we conceptualize the problem of difference in International Relations, the continuing impact of legacies of colonialism, and the prospects for coexistence within notions of relationality and decoloniality. Recently, he started working on a book about colonial legacies in U.S.A. foreign policy towards Latin America. (More info. available )

Dr. Christine Wieseler

Dr. Christine Wieseler is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at CPP. She is an advisory board member for Philosophy in a Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) and associate editor for The Journal of Philosophy of Disability. Her areas of specialization are biomedical ethics, feminist philosophy, continental philosophy, and philosophy of disability. She has published numerous articles at the intersection of theseareas in journals including Hypatia, IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy, and Social Philosophy Today. Together with Joel Michael Reynolds, she co-edited The Disability Bioethics Reader. She has taught courses including feminist ethics, feminist philosophy, philosophy of disability, bioethics, ethical theory, applied ethics, and existentialism.

Aaron Cayer

is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at ��88�� where his teaching, research, and service work focus on the history and theory of architecture, professions, and political economies. He received his Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Norwich University in Vermont. Previously, Cayer taught at University of New Mexico as an Assistant Professor from 2018-2023. His research about architecture firms and architectural education has appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes. His first book, was published by UC Press in 2025. He is currently working on two new book projects: one about professional practice, and another about men, masculinity, and architecture.

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