Dr. Asher Brandon Caplan is a Postdoctoral Fellow working under the supervision of Dr. Susan Dieleman in the Critical Thinking & Civic Engagement Lab and the Department of Philosophy. His research lies at the intersection of the philosophy of technology and social epistemology, where he explores how novel technologies, including data formats, social media platforms, and generative AI, modify practices of reason-giving and political deliberation.

In the CTCE Lab, Asher will research the epistemological and ethical problems posed by “deepfakes” or AI-generated audio-visual disinformation. Specifically, he is interested in how some highly realistic deepfakes can be brought to light through technology-assisted social deliberation, in which social actors make use of competing audio-visual sources, reverse-image search tools, and AI detectors. During his time at the University of Lethbridge, Asher also plans to research how multimodal chatbots both generate and verify images through text-based prompting and how AI-generated content is used as a tool for harassment and extortion.

Dr. Holly Longair is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy and the Critical Thinking + Civic Engagement Lab, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Dieleman.

Her research interests explore the intersection of identity, knowledge, and power, particularly as it relates to political issues of equality and justice. Her past work has focused on issues related to epistemic injustice and relational egalitarian theories of justice, and she is co-editor of Gaslighting: Philosophical Approaches (SUNY Press 2025). 

Her current work theorizes ‘rural’ as a social category and social identity, building an intersectional analysis of how being rural (as opposed to suburban or urban) impacts peoples’ sense of self and experiences of the world, particularly their experiences of marginalization, injustice, and oppression. Her work at University of Lethbridge will continue examining the implications of rural identity for economic, social, structural, and epistemic injustice, and other topics in social and political philosophy.

Ian Olasov’s research interests are wide-ranging — spanning stereotype change, critical philosophy of language, the theory and practice of public philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of journalism — but revolve around questions about speech in the public interest. He is the author of Ask a Philosopher: Answers to Your Most Important and Most Unexpected Questions (St. Martin’s: 2020) and a co-editor of A Companion to Public Philosophy (Wiley: 2022). He is also serving as the President of the Public Philosophy Network, an organization that supports and develops resources for people doing publicly engaged philosophy, from 2023 to 2026. Current writing projects include a paper on how philosophy can reenchant the modern world, a paper about why we might want to change people’s stereotypes, a paper on philosophical expertise, and a book about understanding politically significant speech and how to tell when the politics of language really matters. Current public philosophy projects include planning conferences and workshops, the Public Philosophy Syllabus and Assignment Archive, a collection of Guides to Public Philosophy, and a white paper on supporting public philosophy through academic hiring and promotion. When he’s not thinking about philosophy (and sometimes when he is), he’s running, cooking, or Zooming with his partner in Brooklyn and their two dogs Patty and Scrapple.