Tim’s current project studies the way people with Parkinson’s disease and Essential Tremor use deep-brain stimulator systems – where a pacemaker-like device implanted in the user’s chest applies electricity to electrodes implanted in the user’s brain – to manage their symptoms … Tim collects the users’ experiences through interviews and uses them to challenge philosophical theories about autonomy, self-control, and personal identity.
Tim Brown (Philosophy) has received a prestigious Humanities Without Walls fellowship to attend a three-week institute in Chicago this summer as one of 30 doctoral students selected nationwide.
Humanities Without Walls is an initiative led by 15 humanities centers at Midwestern research universities to create new avenues for research, teaching, and the production of scholarship inside and outside the academy. It is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and organized by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
The program’s goals dovetail with the Simpson Center’s Next Generation Humanities PhD initiative, including the current Philosophy Branches Out project, a partnership with the Department of Philosophy.
The award recognizes Tim’s work on the ethics of neural technology and engineering with the UW Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering's (CSNE) Neuroethics Thrust. From the Department of Philosophy:
Tim’s current project studies the way people with Parkinson’s disease and Essential Tremor use deep-brain stimulator systems – where a pacemaker-like device implanted in the user’s chest applies electricity to electrodes implanted in the user’s brain – to manage their symptoms … Tim collects the users’ experiences through interviews and uses them to challenge philosophical theories about autonomy, self-control, and personal identity.
Congratulations, Tim!