Stanford Humanities Center
Caitlin Murphy Brust is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Education at Stanford University. She holds an MA in Philosophy. She studies educational justice both philosophically and empirically, exploring what constitutes (un)just epistemic environments in U.S. higher education and how educators, students, and institutions themselves can combat forms of epistemic injustice within these environments. Her interdisciplinary research draws from feminist and social epistemology, liberal and democratic education, and ethical and political theory; she also uses qualitative methods to explore how college students and educators identify as knowers and navigate relations of knowledge, identity, and power in the liberal arts classroom.
SHC Project
Resisting Epistemic Injustice in U.S. Higher Education: A Feminist Reconceptualization of Liberal Education
Brust's dissertation explores forms of epistemic injustice and strategies for resistance in U.S. higher education, especially colleges and universities committed to liberal educational ideals and practices. Epistemic injustice arises when a person or group is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, when they are devalued, undermined, or harmed in epistemic practices that are vital for human flourishing. Her dissertation is a work of empirically-engaged philosophy, drawing from the recent approaches of philosophers of education who incorporate sociological research as well as novel empirical analysis into their work. She first provides a sociologically-grounded theoretical account of the unjust conditions of the epistemic environment of the university, constituted by a complex system of norms, values, beliefs, practices, and resources within and across institutions. Against this backdrop, she brings together feminist epistemology and informal political representation theory to identify solutions in both formal learning in the liberal arts seminar classroom and informal learning through academic mentoring relationships. She then applies these philosophical concerns to a year-long qualitative study exploring how students and faculty navigate relations of knowledge, identity, and power in a California State University’s Humanities Honors Program.
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
Caitlin Murphy Brust and Hannah Widmaier, “U.S. Higher Education’s Civic Responsibility to Educate for Informal Political Representation,” Educational Theory (forthcoming 2024).
Caitlin Murphy Brust, “Epistemic Injustice in Education,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (forthcoming 2023).
Caitlin Murphy Brust and Rebecca M. Taylor, “Resisting Epistemic Injustice: The Responsibilities of College Educators at HPWIs,” Educational Theory (forthcoming 2023).
Caitlin Murphy Brust, “Reimagining ‘Learning For Its Own Sake’ in Liberal Education,” Philosophy of Education 77, no. 1 (September 2021), 150-163.
Public Writing:
Caitlin Murphy Brust, “‘So where are they all?’: The search for mentorship in academia as a matter of ethics and justice | A Q&A with Harry Brighouse,” McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society news website, forthcoming in August 2023.
Caitlin Murphy Brust and Minju Choi, “The Limits of Educational Transformation: Why We Must Resist Epistemic Injustice in U.S. Higher Education,” Stanford Graduate School of Education Public Scholarship Collective, forthcoming in August 2023.
Caitlin Murphy Brust, “‘Ethics & the Academy’: Making Space for Ethical Reflection,” McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society news website, October 7, 2022.
