I am Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Adjunct with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Louisville. While working at U of L, I also served as Core Faculty of the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Bioethics and Medical Humanities and an Adjunct in Women’s and Gender Studies. My current interest is what it means to listen well to others. In particular, I do research and give presentations in meanings and interplays between voice, silence, and listening well as it applies in clinical settings and with respect to patients/service users. In 2019, I held an Advanced Seminar in Oxford (see description and final programme). This topic is turning out to be a book-length project in which I start from J.L. Austin’s idea that talking is a kind of action and that some particular linguistic exchanges require that the listener give what he calls ‘uptake.’ I expand from this idea, exploring the epistemological and ethical implications of listening well and the sorts of damage that can be done when we fail. This requires as well that I analyze the concepts of voice and of different kinds of silences/silencings. I am especially concerned with ways we may do epistemic violence to service users and others when we experience colliding values and world-views. One way this can show up is when we make judgments about whose testimony is or is not epistemically credible, a challenge made more difficult when working with people who are diagnosed with (or just perceived to have) mental illnesses—whether it be in clinical encounters, peer counseling, or coproduction— based on assumptions and stereotypes of perceived racialization, class, gender, and citizenship. A recent article that begins to address some of these issues can be found here.