Rate My Professor Charles Gibson

Charles Reuben Gibson earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Otago in 2019, with a thesis entitled A Defence of Biodiversity as the Goal of Conservation Biology, primarily supervised by Professor James Maclaurin and co-supervised by Dr Elisabeth Ellis. Recognised as an exceptional thesis by the Division of Humanities, it addresses challenges to biodiversity as conservation's primary goal, grouping eliminativist arguments into conceptual, empirical, and value compass categories, while defending biodiversity as a homeostatic property cluster kind. The work has been cited in subsequent philosophical discussions on conservation. Previously, Gibson received the Kerry Thorn Memorial Scholarship in 2011 for high achievement in 300-level Philosophy while advancing to postgraduate study. As a postgraduate, he researched ethical issues in conservation biology for his Master's around 2013 and served as course contact for PHIL222: Introduction to Logic in Semester 1, 2022. In 2019, he became the first Otago Philosophy PhD candidate to mark thesis submission by sounding the bell, a tradition borrowed from Columbia University.