Advisory Committee
since 2021.
Professor Emeritus Patricia Benner is faculty emerita at the University of California School of Nursing. Dr. Benner is a noted nursing educator and author of From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Nursing Practice, which has been translated into twelve languages. She has directed over 50 doctoral dissertations. She pioneered the use of Interpretive Phenomenology in Nursing. She is the director of this Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching National Nursing Education Study, Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation which is the first such study in forty years. Additionally, she collaborated with the Carnegie Preparation for the Professions studies of clergy, engineering, law, and medicine. Dr. Benner is designated as a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing. She was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing and Danish Society for Nurses. Her work has influence beyond nursing in the areas of clinical practice and clinical ethics. She has received two honorary doctorates. She is the first author of Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Ethics and Clinical Judgment (2010) with Christine Tanner and Catherine Chesla, and she has coauthored twelve other notable books including a 2nd Edition of Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Acute and Critical Care: A Thinking-In-Action Approach.
Professor Sven Bernecker is faculty in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is the founding Co-Director of the Minor in Medical Humanities, the founding Director of the Cologne Center for Contemporary Epistemology and the Kantian Tradition, and a Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in Johannesburg. His primary areas of research are epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. In the field of medical epistemology, he studies evidence hierarchies, statistical evidence, informed consent, placebo effect, and the epistemic role of trust. He is the author of Reading Epistemology (Blackwell, 2026), The Metaphysics of Memory (Springer, 2008), and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is co-editor of Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2000), Companion to Epistemology (Routledge, 2011), Handbook of Philosophy of Memory (Routledge, 2017), Medical Knowledge in the Social World, special issue of Synthese (2019), and The Epistemology of Fake News (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Associate Professor Jess Dillard-Wright, PhD, MA, RN, CNM (she/they) lives, works, and plays in Western Massachusetts. She/they are a white, fat, genderqueer, queer, and disabled faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst Elaine Marieb College of Nursing. Jess is an affiliate of the University of Massachusetts IALS Center for Personalized Health Monitoring, co-leading the ethics arm of a collaborative research thrust, Health Tech for the People. She/they are also a 2023 Public Interest Technology (PIT@UMass) fellow working with a team of transdisciplinary collaborators in thinking about communicating complex ideas, the use of black boxed technologies in/as healthcare and for health, and new material/care ethics in accountable and community-focused ways, focused on reproductive health and death care. Jess was the 2021/22 fellow for the University of California Irvine Center for Nursing Philosophy. Jess also serves on the American Nurses Association Ethics Advisory Board. She/they work in collaboration with folks across the country and around the world to first imagine and then build worlds that are just, equitable, sustainable. Examples of this work include Nursing Mutual Aid, Call to Action for Health+Liberation alternate nurses week actions, and an ongoing community with the Compost Collaborative. More about Jess’s visions for a collective future can be found in Nursing a Radical Imagination: Moving from Theory and History to Action and Alternate Futures, an anthology she/they co-edited published by Routledge.
Professor Dave Holmes is Associate Dean, Academic Programs and Student Affairs in the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing at the University of California, Irvine. After completing his B.Sc. (Ottawa, 1991), M.Sc. (Montreal, 1998) and Ph.D. (Montreal, 2002) in Nursing, he completed a CIHR post-doctoral fellowship in Health Care, Technology and Place at the University of Toronto (2003). To date, he has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to conduct his research program on risk management in the fields of public health and forensic nursing. Most of his works, comments, essays, analyses and empirical research are based on the poststructuralist works of Deleuze & Guattari and Michel Foucault. His works have been published in top-tier journals in nursing, criminology, sociology and medicine. To this date, he have published over 155 articles in peer reviewed journals and 50 book chapters. He is co-editor of Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Health Care (Routledge – April 2009), Abjectly Boundless: Boundaries, Bodies and Health Care (Routledge – January 2010), (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings: A Critical Approach (Routledge – December 2011), Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus (Routledge – March 2014) and, Radical Sex Between Men: Assembling Desiring-Machines (Routledge – September 2017). He has presented at numerous national and international conferences and was appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor in Australia, Indonesia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Professor Stefanos Mantzoukas is faculty in Qualitative Research & Reflective Praxis at the University of Ioannina (Greece) and has an established teaching record of over 20 years in higher education. He completed his PhD at the University of Portsmouth (UK), which focused on reflective practice and developing practice knowledge based on Dewey’s and Foucualt’s philosophy. Stefanos had led research teams and consortia in securing external competitive funding (primarily from EU sources) for research and innovation activities of over 5 million euros that focus on empowering older individuals to live well, promote their sense of well-being and maintain or develop feelings of living a healthy life. The philosophical tradition that inspires Stefanos’ work is the pragmatist and neo-pragmatist philosophies, where knowledge and understanding of the human condition and human care embrace an antirepresentationalist and ironist suspicious best viewed and translated in daily practice in terms of what is useful, practical and successfully applicable. Furthermore, Stefanos has published, amongst others, on epistemological, knowledge construction and philosophical issues. Stefanos is the co-editor-in-chief for the journal of Nursing Philosophy and sits on the editorial board for a series of other journals, including the Journal of Advanced Nursing and Reflective Practice journal. He is an ex-officio member of the Executive Committee for the International Philosophy of Nursing Society and is the host organiser of the 27 International Nursing Philosophy Conference.
Professor Pamela G. Reed is faculty at The University of Arizona College of Nursing where she also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Her research has focused on well-being and mental health across the lifespan, spirituality at end-of-life, and moral distress in frontline caregivers. Her current scholarship focuses on nursing theory, philosophy and scientific knowledge development, and work on a philosophy of nursing science called intermodernism. Dr. Reed’s self-transcendence theory is published in nursing theory textbooks and articles for research and practice, and her Spiritual Perspective Scale and Self-Transcendence Scale have been used by researchers around the world. In addition, she and a colleague have authored several editions of two books, Perspectives on Nursing Theory and Nursing Knowledge and Theory Innovation: Advancing the Science of Practice. Dr. Reed teaches philosophy of nursing science & practice, and theory development to PhD and DNP nursing students. She holds a BSN, MSN (in Child/Adol PMH) and PhD (major in nursing) from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and an MA in philosophy from The University of Arizona. Dr. Reed is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
Professor Emeritus Sally Thorne was faculty in the School of Nursing at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She studies patient experience in serious and life-limiting conditions such as chronic disease and cancer, most recently focusing on palliative approaches to care delivery across health care sectors and nurses’ experiences with end-of-life care, including medical assistance in dying (MAiD) as the legal framework for that practice evolves in Canada. In addition to her substantive research, she advises various professional and policy organizations, and actively fosters nursing scholarship development through her philosophical and methodological writings, as well as through her role as editor-in-chief of the journal Nursing Inquiry, which is always seeking high-quality philosophical submissions.
Founding Steering Committee
Bender received her PhD in Nursing Science in May 2013 from the University of San Diego Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science, and joined the University of California, Irvine Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing as an Assistant Professor in November 2014. Her scholarship falls into two distinct but related streams, empirical and philosophical. Empirically, Dr. Bender’s research focuses on the relationships between the organization of care delivery, multi-professional practice dynamics, and patient care quality and safety outcomes. Her most recent work seeks to conceptualize and quantify the efficacy of a model that integrates a new role, the clinical nurse leader (CNL), into nursing care delivery. This program of research intersects with implementation science as it explores how care interventions, context (people, things, and processes that characterize where the intervention is introduced), and implementation (processes of intervention integration) interact with each other to influence outcomes. Philosophically, Dr. Bender has focused on engaging and re-interpreting fundamental disciplinary concepts such as the nursing metaparadigm and art-science dualism using a process philosophy lens. She is also founding Director of the Center for Nursing Philosophy, which provides a platform for engaging the local, national, and international nursing community and aims to advance novel scholarship elucidating the assumptions, principles, and concepts driving the discipline.
Benner is a professor emerita at the University of California School of Nursing. Dr. Benner is a noted nursing educator and author of From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Nursing Practice, which has been translated into twelve languages. She has directed over 50 doctoral dissertations. She pioneered the use of Interpretive Phenomenology in Nursing. She is the director of this Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching National Nursing Education Study, Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation which is the first such study in forty years. Additionally, she collaborated with the Carnegie Preparation for the Professions studies of clergy, engineering, law, and medicine. Dr. Benner is designated as a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing. She was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing and Danish Society for Nurses. Her work has influence beyond nursing in the areas of clinical practice and clinical ethics. She has received two honorary doctorates. She is the first author of Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Ethics and Clinical Judgment (2010) with Christine Tanner and Catherine Chesla, and she has coauthored twelve other notable books including a 2nd Edition of Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Acute and Critical Care: .A Thinking-In-Action Approach.
Holmes is a Professor and Associate Dean, Academic Programs and Student Affairs in the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing at the University of California, Irvine. After completing my B.Sc. (Ottawa, 1991), M.Sc. (Montreal, 1998) and Ph.D. (Montreal, 2002) in Nursing, I have completed a CIHR post-doctoral fellowship in Health Care, Technology and Place at the University of Toronto (2003). To date, I have received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to conduct my research program on risk management in the fields of public health and forensic nursing. Most of my works, comments, essays, analyses and empirical research are based on the poststructuralist works of Deleuze & Guattari and Michel Foucault. My works have been published in top-tier journals in nursing, criminology, sociology and medicine. To this day, I have published over 155 articles in peer reviewed journals and 50 book chapters. I am co-editor of Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Health Care (Routledge – April 2009), Abjectly Boundless: Boundaries, Bodies and Health Care (Routledge – January 2010), (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings: A Critical Approach (Routledge – December 2011), Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus (Routledge – March 2014) and, Radical Sex Between Men: Assembling Desiring-Machines (Routledge – September 2017). I have presented at numerous national and international conferences and was appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor in Australia, Indonesia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Pritchard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities. Professor Pritchard’s research is mainly in the area of epistemology, and he has published broadly in this field. His monographs include Epistemic Luck (Oxford UP, 2005), The Nature and Value of Knowledge (co-authored, Oxford UP, 2010), Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford UP, 2012), and Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton UP, 2015). In 2005, Prof Pritchard held a Danish Academy of Sciences/NAMICONA Visiting Research Professorship and was also a Mellon Foundation Visiting Epistemology Fellow at Brown University. In 2007, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Philosophy. In 2009, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Helsinki. In 2011, he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2013, his work was the subject of the Annual Cologne Summer School in Philosophy. In 2013, he delivered the Annual Soochow Lectures in Philosophy. In 2016 his work was the subject of the Annual LOGOS Philosophy Masterclass Lectures, University of Barcelona. In 2016 he was invited to be the Tang Chun-I Distinguished Visiting Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong (deferred). Prof Pritchard has so far delivered three Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures.
Reed is Professor at The University of Arizona College of Nursing where she also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Her research has focused on well-being and mental health across the lifespan, spirituality at end-of-life, and moral distress in frontline caregivers. Her current scholarship focuses on nursing theory, philosophy and scientific knowledge development, and work on a philosophy of nursing science called intermodernism. Dr. Reed’s self-transcendence theory is published in nursing theory textbooks and articles for research and practice, and her Spiritual Perspective Scale and Self-Transcendence Scale have been used by researchers around the world. In addition, she and a colleague have authored several editions of two books, Perspectives on Nursing Theory and Nursing Knowledge and Theory Innovation: Advancing the Science of Practice. Dr. Reed teaches philosophy of nursing science & practice, and theory development to PhD and DNP nursing students. She holds a BSN, MSN (in Child/Adol PMH) and PhD (major in nursing) from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and an MA in philosophy from The University of Arizona. Dr. Reed is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
Risjord is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Emory University. He studied anthropology and philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1990, he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. An interdisciplinary scholar trained in philosophy, Risjord treats philosophical questions as intrinsic to scientific practice. In the first instance, philosophical problems arise as theoretical, methodological, or ethical questions in the sciences. Philosophy subjects these issues to critical reflection, viewing current difficulties in the light of two millennia of literature. In the end, a view’s success should be measured by its capacity to invigorate the scholarship of those who faced the difficulty in the first place. Practiced in this way, the philosophy of science exhibits a distinctive form of interdisciplinarity. With respect to issues in health care, Risjord’s primary focus has been issues in nursing research. His book Nursing Knowledge: Science, Practice, and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) studies the history of nursing scholarship and contributes to contemporary discussions in nursing about the character of nursing research.
Sellman is an associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. He completed a Master’s in Teaching Health Care Ethics and a PhD (Philosophy of Education) at the Institute of Education, University of London. Dr. Sellman is director of the unit for Philosophical Nursing Research. He is a former editor-in-chief (2008-2019) of the journal Nursing Philosophy and is a former Secretary of the International Philosophy of Nursing Society. His book What Makes a Good Nurse: Why the Virtues are Important for Nurses reflects his main research interest in virtue ethics as a base for ethical nursing practice in general and in relation to the moral education of nurses in particular.
Thorne is a professor in the School of Nursing at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She studies patient experience in serious and life-limiting conditions such as chronic disease and cancer, most recently focusing on palliative approaches to care delivery across health care sectors and nurses’ experiences with end-of-life care, including medical assistance in dying (MAiD) as the legal framework for that practice evolves in Canada. In addition to her substantive research, she advises various professional and policy organizations, and actively fosters nursing scholarship development through her philosophical and methodological writings, as well as through her role as editor-in-chief of the journal Nursing Inquiry, which is always seeking high-quality philosophical submissions.
