Viviane Fairbank | Philosophy Speaker Series

At Queen’s, my project is concerned with the notion of objectivity. More specifically, I am interested in the relationship between seemingly objective epistemic norms—norms of belief, inference, and inquiry—and the social world. What makes certain kinds of inquiry rigorous, and what level of certainty can we attribute to their products, despite their being performed by us fallible, contingent, social creatures? I am developing a new understanding of objectivity which can help us answer this question, drawing from contemporary pragmatist and feminist philosophy. I hope to show how the notion of objectivity can play a substantive role in our intellectual and practical lives, while nevertheless shedding some of its metaphysical baggage.

Viviane Fairbank is Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy, Queen's College, University of Oxford. She received a Master’s in Philosophy from Concordia University (Montréal, 2022) and a PhD from the St. Andrews and Stirling Graduate Programme in Philosophy (St Andrews, 2026). She is a co-founder of the Truth in Journalism Project, and has ongoing projects in journalism and the philosophy of journalism.