Meet Minji Jang — Ethics Lab’s Newest Team Member
Minji Jang
Postdoctoral Fellow, Philosophy
Minji Jang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ethics Lab, where she helps design the curriculum for and teaches a foundational ethics course in Georgetown’s Earth Commons Institute.
Minji’s primary research interests are in ethics, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. In her current project, she develops and defends a pluralistic picture of blame to accommodate a broader range of our experiences that have been neglected in the dominant narratives, including the experiences of socially marginalized groups in the face of structural injustice.
Minji holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from UNC Chapel Hill. While at Chapel Hill, she co-founded a MAP Chapter and organized a COMPASS workshop for underrepresented groups in philosophy. She was also a Teaching Assistant Coordinator in charge of hosting teaching workshops and pedagogy discussion groups.
What drew you to Ethics Lab?
I was instantly drawn in from the interview stage. I already had so much fun creating a sample class activity, and I had more fun discussing my proposed idea with the team members. I was so excited to meet a whole team whose core mission is to design and implement a creative and engaging learner-centered pedagogy. I was really excited to hear about other missions of the Lab like moving theory into practice through the embedded ethics program and external consultation programs with different institutes. The role of philosophy is this shared, collaborative task of building a better, well-functioning society. The very mission of the lab coincided with my current interest and what I’m thinking about these days.
What will you be working on?
My main project this semester is going to be our collaboration with the Earth Commons Institute. I’m going to be a part of the team that designs the core ethics curriculum. I’m also excited for other projects like our collaboration with healthcare and tech companies.
How does Ethics Lab’s work overlap with your own philosophical interests?
I’m very broadly interested in ethics, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. I have ongoing projects in different stages, but just as I reached the final years of grad school I’ve been thinking about the role of philosophy and the role of humanities and the role of philosophers in our task of building a better-functioning society. It has to be done in collaboration with other fields and disciplines, but I think philosophy is uniquely equipped to serve multiple, distinct, vital roles in this task. We use it to evaluate and question dominantly used concepts and core assumptions that are already built into our social practices, and we use it to design and build new concepts that haven’t existed before. At the same time, we use it to demystify and support our daily experiences that have been left opaque and sometimes dismissed. Philosophy has a tangible role in making progress, and the mission of Ethics Lab to translate ethics into practice, moving theory into practice, directly overlapped with what I’ve been thinking about a lot.
What’s something that’s inspiring you right now?
A few years ago I attended Maggie’s talk about translational ethics, and that was the first time I ever heard about this term. It was a wild and fascinating idea, and I had no idea that a few years later I’d actually be part of the team that carries out the mission that I found so fascinating—so I’m really inspired by the fact that I get to be a part of this team!
I’m also inspired to move to a new city, community, and school. I’ve been in this country for ten years already. But it’s my first time living in a big city, so I’m really excited to meet new people, visit new places, and explore new cultures.