On February 28 and March 1, 2025, Project Vox celebrated its 10th anniversary as a website and a global initiative by hosting a Symposium at Duke University Libraries. Past team members joined scholars, students, staff, and the current team to reflect on what’s changed since we started this project, what practices and values helped us sustain this work, and what’s next.
Where did we begin?
This project began in 2014 with a small, scrappy group of faculty, staff, and students who wanted to bring the voices of early modern women philosophers back into philosophy’s canon. At the time, male philosophy students outnumbered female students almost 3 to 1 — unusually low for a humanities discipline and even lower than some sciences (e.g., see this visualization by Kieran Healy using the 2011 Survey of Earned Doctorates data). Ten years later, there is greater parity of women and men undergraduates majoring in philosophy, Project Vox is part of a global network working to call more attention to marginalized voices in philosophy, and we’ve discovered that interest in marginalized philosophers extends far beyond the undergraduate philosophy instructors we’d originally thought would be our audience. You can read more about Project Vox’s history in the following posts:
- “Creating Project Vox,” https://projectvox.org/behind-the-scenes/creating-project-vox/
- “February 28 & March 1: Rethinking philosophy through Project Vox,” https://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2025/02/27/feb-28-mar-1-rethinking-philosophy-through-project-vox/
- “Lost and Found: Bringing history’s female philosophers to the forefront,” https://today.duke.edu/2025/02/lost-and-found-bringing-historys-female-philosophers-forefront
What got us here?
From the beginning, the 10th Anniversary Symposium was imagined as a way to reflect on the project: who were the team, how they worked together, and especially, many years later, what people see as its lasting impact. Project Vox’s goal has always been to reintroduce those who were overlooked or ignored when philosophy’s canon was formed; but as our work progressed, the teamwork took on more significance. The number of students researching, writing, and publishing entries and images and developing the website rapidly overtook the number of staff and faculty involved. Curiously, many of the students weren’t even philosophy majors. Our meetings were a mix of different knowledge and skills, and we quickly learned how important (and rewarding) it was to talk through our ideas together.
For that reason, the 10th Anniversary Symposium was organized to be a conversation — among panelists and with participants — about the practices and values that have animated this project as well as what we hoped to accomplish and what we might do in the future. The Symposium program, panelists, and panel topics are here: https://projectvox.org/2025-symposium/.
What are we carrying forward?
Below, a few of our current team members share their reflections on what the Symposium was like and what they learned.
Kevin
“The Symposium brought together Project Vox alumni and current scholars from across the nation (and Canada!) to discuss the work of Project Vox and ideas about teaching philosophy in a renewed way for undergraduate students. Professor Karen Detlefsen from the University of Pennsylvania talked about the periodization of philosophy education, and how Project Vox offers an opportunity to expand from the European canon that the vast majority of philosophy students are taught from, almost entirely. Professor Marcy Lascano of the University of Kansas commented on the trustworthiness of online sources like Wikipedia for conducting both scholarship and improving public knowledge about philosophical figures. Students and professors also debated how artificial intelligence in the classroom and new modes of technology might affect education and scholarship in the field; a balance exists between ChatGPT and novel methods of translation. As current team members, we learned greatly about the state of philosophy education and how schools are changing or adapting to new material and disruptive technologies.”
Joyce
“At our symposium, we were also thrilled to welcome back alumni who have once been part of Project Vox. There’s something deeply moving about seeing familiar faces, many of whom have moved on to new chapters in their lives, yet still carry with them the same fervor for the mission we’ve all embraced. When they return, it feels as though they’ve never truly left. Just like the Ship of Theseus—where, despite the changes in crew, each part of the journey continues to carry the essence of the whole—we remain a team. We have each contributed our piece, and though new faces come and go, the unwavering passion for Project Vox endures. It’s the kind of spirit that transcends time and space. And in that, we find not just a project, but a community—a family of thinkers, past and present—united by something greater than any individual part.”
Lindsay
“Exciting conversations came out of the sessions on teaching. In those sessions, there was a lot of enthusiasm about how we might expand the teaching resources on our website to include curricular materials that high school teachers might use to incorporate Project Vox’s figures into their history or literature courses. Project Vox’s current team includes a number of graduate students particularly passionate about education and pre-college philosophy, so we immediately identified this as an avenue worth pursuing in the coming year(s).
“Because the symposium included so many past team members, as well as current stakeholders from outside Duke, current team members were able to learn about past efforts to create such materials and brainstorm about how to address the challenges the team faced last time. This led to discussions with Karen Detlefsen from the University of Pennsylvania about how we might collaborate with her Project for Philosophy for the Young to test our curricular materials in real classroom. Through these conversations, we began to assemble a team excited to start creating curricular materials that we hope will engage pre-college students and be useful for teachers.”
Kevin Li is a sophomore at Duke University, interested in applied ethics and American inequality.
Joyce Li is a freshman at Duke University, interested in philosophy, computer science, and visual and media studies.
Lindsay Huth is a PhD student in Duke University’s Department of Philosophy, interested in ethics and moral psychology as well as philosophical pedagogy.
