Travis Dumsday
University of Calgary
Philosophy
I began doctoral studies in the philosophy department here in 2006, coming from a Master’s program at the University of Waterloo. I chose Calgary largely because of its highly regarded philosophy faculty, some of whose areas of research nicely matched my own. Having successfully defended my dissertation on March 19, 2010, I remain convinced I made the right choice. I have spent more than three years in a friendly, supportive, and diverse department within a world-class university. I am especially pleased to be working with my supervisor, Prof. Marc Ereshefsky, an internationally recognized leader in the philosophy of science.
In addition to my dissertation work, I have attempted to stay active in other sub-fields, and have published pieces on applied ethics, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
For instance, in applied ethics, one paper I have published is on the question of group privacy. We normally think of the right to privacy as being an individual right, but we can ask the question: can groups possess and lose privacy, and have their privacy violated? I examined this issue in the light of the specific context of government surveillance of religious services, such as the weekly worship service at a mosque. Given that such services are ostensibly public, is government surveillance of them even a legitimate privacy issue? I attempted to answer this question and also to develop some ideas on when this kind of surveillance is or is not morally permissible.
I am pleased to say that my work has benefitted from the research grant provided through the Killam Trusts. It allowed me to present some of my dissertation work to a philosophy of science conference at the University of Nottingham. A longer version of that paper has now been accepted for publication, and in my final footnote I of course acknowledge the important support of the Killam Trusts.
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