Congratulations to Philosopher and COA Dean Samantha Brennan!

Big congratulations to philosopher Samantha Brennan, Dean of the College of Arts, who is part of a team that has been awarded a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant for The Age Gate Project: Rethinking the philosophical and empirical bases for using age thresholds to decide who holds rights and responsibilities.

Led by Alissa Koski (McGill), the project brings together philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists — Daniel Weinstock (McGill Law), Andrew Botterell (Western Law), Monica Ruiz-Casares (Toronto Metropolitan University), Maria Grahn-Farley (University of Gothenburg), Andrei Poama (Leiden University), and me — to ask why age thresholds in law get set where they do, whether they track real capacities, and what that means at both ends of life.

Dean Brennan will be co-leading (with Daniel Weinstock) the strand looking at age thresholds in later life — whether the same reasoning we apply to youth should apply as capacities change with age, and tells us that she is "Excited to do philosophy again, especially with this great team."