Dean Joseph

Dean Joseph is a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University. His research focuses on the moral foundations of democracy and the political agency of dependent agents, including children, people with cognitive disabilities, and animals. His dissertation engages equality and autonomy arguments for democracy to explore the case for extending participation rights to dependent agents and the conditions for enabling meaningful co-authorship in a shared society. Dean’s research is supervised by Will Kymlicka and supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship. In 2026, he will be a visiting doctoral researcher at the University of Arizona.