Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago
Faculty
The Phenomenology Research Group (PRG) is run by Loyola University Chicago faculty and is open to all interested members of the academic community and the general public. Please feel free to contact the directors, Professor Dimitris Apostolopoulos and Professor Johanna Oksala by email if you are interested in participating.
PRG Directors
Dimitris Apostolopoulos, PhD
Dimitris Apostolopoulos is an assistant professor of philosophy. His research interests fall within post-Kantian European philosophy, with a focus on phenomenology. Some of his recent projects have explored issues at the intersection of phenomenology and German Idealism, phenomenological philosophy of language, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history.
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Prior to joining Loyola, he taught at NTU Singapore as assistant professor of philosophy. He completed a doctorate in philosophy and a postdoc at the University of Notre Dame.
Johanna Oksala, PhD
Johanna Oksala is the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Philosophy. She joined Loyola University Chicago in August 2019. Before coming to LUC, Oksala taught at Pratt Institute of Art and Design (NY, USA), New School for Social Research (NY, USA), University of Helsinki (Finland), and University of Dundee (Scotland, UK).
Professor Oksala’s areas of expertise are political philosophy, feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy, Foucault, and phenomenology. She is the author of six monographs and over seventy journal articles and book chapters. Her work has been translated into ten languages. Oksala is on the editorial board of several academic journals, and she has given over a hundred conference papers and invited talks internationally. Oksala’s books include: Foucault on Freedom (Cambridge UP, 2005), How to Read Foucault (Granta Books, 2007), Foucault, Politics, and Violence (Northwestern UP, 2012), Political Philosophy: All That Matters (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013), Feminist Experiences (Northwestern UP, 2016), and Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology (Northwestern UP, 2023). For further information on Professor Oksala’s academic experience and publications, see https://johannaoksala.com.
PRG Affiliate Faculty
Michael Andrews, PhD
Professor Andrews is interested in exploring the complex relationship between phenomenology, ethics, and transcendence, both in terms of classical phenomenology of the Göttingen School (Brentano, Husserl, Reinach, Scheler, Stein, Ingarden, Conrad-Martius) as well as later existential-critical phenomenology (Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Zizek). In particular, he is concerned with the “turn” in French phenomenology with Catholic Intellectual Thought, including apophatic theology, Greek and medieval metaphysics, hermeneutics, and ontology (Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry). Dr. Andrews has published and taught internationally on the phenomenology of Edith Stein, focusing on Stein’s impact in the areas of feminist ethics, social ontology, women’s education, and engagement of thought between Edmund Husserl and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Andrew Cutrofello, PhD
Andrew Cutrofello is interested in the history of the concept of phenomenology from Lambert to Kant to Hegel to Husserl and beyond, up to and including Badiou's "objective" phenomenology in Logics of Worlds. He is also interested in psychoanalytic challenges to phenomenology in the work of thinkers such as Sartre, Fanon, Lacan, Nicolas Abraham, and Maria Torok.
Eyo Ewara, PhD
Eyo Ewara's research engages the intersections of 20th century continental philosophy, critical philosophy of race, LGBT philosophy, and queer theory. In particular, he is interested in both the uptake of phenomenological tools in work on race, anti-racism and queerness and in critical responses to those tools. He has written in this vein on Martin Heidegger, Judith Butler, and Frantz Fanon, among others.
Jennifer Gaffney, PhD
Jennifer Gaffney is an associate professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Her research focuses on social and political philosophy, twentieth century European philosophy, phenomenology, Hannah Arendt, and diasporic studies. She is especially interested in issues concerning the limits of liberal citizenship, the politics of historical memory, and the exclusion of diasporic peoples from the modern liberal state.
Jesús Luzardo, PhD
Jesús Luzardo is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy. His research interests are Social Political Philosophy (especially Marxism and theories of Racial Capitalism), Black Studies, and Continental Philosophy. He is interested in the potential and fraught relationship between phenomenology and historical materialism. He is currently working on a book manuscript which uses phenomenology, among other methods, to explore the relationship between nostalgia and white supremacy.
Graduate Students
Cheryl Fok
Cheryl is primarily interested in the phenomenology of alterity and self-knowledge.
Omar Khali
Omar Khali's research in phenomenology concerns analyzing social formations at the level of the subject 's lived sense of agency (or lack thereof) within their immediate situation. He is currently interested in how practices of self-objectification, as an instrument of power, structures the subject's relation to their freedom, embodiment, and sociability.
Andrew Krema
Andrew Krema focuses on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. He is presently writing his dissertation on Husserl's phenomenology of value.
Kevin Mager
Kevin Mager's work centers around Merleau-Ponty’s claim that material bodies and mind are always in mixture. The acknowledgement of this mixture calls for a revision of the metaphysics of nature and implies that there is a "homogeneity" between sciences of facts and sciences of essences. His work develops phenomenological analyses which challenge assumptions about causation, inductive method, and the metaphysical foundations of natural science.
Daphne Pons
Daphne Pons is interested in feminist phenomenology. She is especially interested in Simone de Beauvoir's relationship to the phenomenological tradition.
Kit Rempala
Kit Rempala's research focuses on the perceptions, treatment, and lived experience of chronic, invisible, and/or mental illnesses. By utilizing the method of applied phenomenology, her work aims to identify the structures of experience, co-constitution, and rupture underlying the struggles and mistreatment of the illness community. With this information, she turns to her background in bioethics to critically investigate how such problems can be amended.
Visiting Scholars
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Fotini Vassiliou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Fulbright Scholar, Spring 2024.
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Gabriele Parrino, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Spring 2024.
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Mickaëlle Provost, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Spring 2022.
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Interested in a research stay at Loyola? Contact the directors for more information.
Department of Philosophy
Philosophy Office:
Crown Center, 3rd Floor ·
1032 West Sheridan Road,
Chicago, IL 60660 ·
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Phone: 773.508.2291 ·
Fax: 773.508.2292 ·
Loyola University Chicago