Visiting Scholars

• Tina Nguyen, PhD

  Dr. Tina Nguyen is a bioethicist and an aspiring clinical ethicist. She holds a PhD in Healthcare Ethics from the Center for Global Health Ethics at Duquesne University. Prior to starting her Clinical Ethics Fellowship at UTMB, Tina was an Adjunct Faculty at the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University as well as a (virtual) clinical ethics intern at the Jewish Association on Aging (JAA) and Bon Secours.

  Tina's research interests are primarily in the ethical governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Her other research interests include demystifying palliative and hospice care. Her thesis, "The Contribution of Ethical Governance of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in Healthcare", explored the justification for ethical governance of these technologies as it leads to ethical usage of AI/ML and why it should be practiced over the more common approach of AI governance.

  Tina is looking forward to her duties as a clinical ethics fellow, continuing to engage in her research interests, and teaching ethics in an accessible manner. 

  
  

   

• Richard Gibson, PhD

  Richard B. Gibson is a bioethicist and moral philosopher. He holds a PhD in Bioethics & Medical Jurisprudence from the University of Manchester, an MA in Bioethics and Society from King’s College London, and a BA(Hons) in Philosophy from the University of the West of England. Before joining UTMB, he was a Teaching Associate in the University of Manchester’s Department of Law.

  Richard’s research interests typically fall at the intersection of human enhancement, novel technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification. His thesis, “Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Cyborgs: An Exploration of the Ethics of Elective Amputation and Enhancement Technologies”, tackled the social, ethical and legal ramifications of permitting therapeutic, healthy limb amputation in cases of Body Integrity Identity Disorder. The work: (i) questioned the appropriateness of such amputations in the context of the ‘internal morality of medicine’, drawing upon Georges Canguilhem’s epistemology as a counterargument; (ii) employed the social model of disability as a means of discrediting arguments against healthy limb amputation; (iii) acknowledged the impact technology has on the nature of disability; and (iv) highlighted how English and Welsh law’s nebulous conception of harm obscures the legality of radical medical interventions.

  His current work covers a range of issues, including cryopreservation, non-military conscription, global health and distributive justice, the philosophy of death and nihilism, and the utilization of obfuscatory legal language.

• Macey Flood, PhD

  I am a health humanist and a cultural historian of medicine.  I hold a PhD in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine from the University of Minnesota.  My research interests fall at the intersections of health practices with Indigenous, settler colonial, religious, and environmental studies.  My thesis, “Simple Medicines: Land, Health, and Power in the nineteenth-century Ojibwe Western Great Lakes,” is a cultural history of medicine in mixed Indigenous Ojibwe and settler communities in the western Great Lakes of Anishinaabewaki between 1823 and 1891.  This project documents the regular circulation of health practices between settler American and Ojibwe communities and how these circulations and the health beliefs that undergirded them fundamentally shaped the development of settler colonial discourses and institutions, from diplomatic negotiations to religious missions to economic policies.
  

  I am also working on a second project on the cultural meanings and political work of Midwestern herbal medicine from approximately 1950-2005, tentatively titled “How We Heal.” Like “Simple Medicines,” this work asks about the cultural and political work that botanical medicine did: where and why plants were scripted as medicine, how herbalists articulated herbal medicine as “traditional” or “scientific,” and how herbal practices signaled ethnic, religious, and political belonging.  “How We Heal” is based on archival and oral history research which I began in 2014.  As a research project, “How We Heal” is closely associated with a participatory research and storytelling initiative called the Herbal History Project.  A small cohort of settler and Indigenous academics, activists, and practicing herbalists, the Herbal History Project runs reading and storytelling groups, shares historical materials and practices with herbalists as well as academics, and is developing a community digital archive for oral histories of people and plants.