Quyen Pham

I am a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and my BA in Philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

My primary interests lie in the intersection between metaphysics and social philosophy. My recent work focuses on a particular kind of social entities, namely, social groups—think clubs, teams, and bands, but also families and committees—and metaphysical issues surrounding their existence, identity, and persistence, among others.

I am also interested in social categories, such as gender and race, and artifacts, the objects of our social world, and how questions about the nature of these entities interact with issues about identity, prejudice, and structural and ontological injustice.

You can read more about my papers published and in progress, courses taught and developed, professional and community services, and outreach projects.

Feel free to reach out to me at phamvulequyen (at) gmail (dot) com.

A note on names: My full name is Phạm Vũ Lệ Quyên. Vietnamese names are family-name-first, with Quyên being the short version of my given name. You may occasionally find me as Le Quyen Pham, but since 2016, I have gone by Quyen Pham in all English-speaking professional contexts. I usually pronounce it like Quinn.

Photo taken by Nikolai Costalas.