Julia C.M. Duetz

I am a PhD candidate and junior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at VU Amsterdam, supervised by Prof. dr. René van Woudenberg and Prof. dr. ir. Jeroen de Ridder. My PhD research is affiliated with the Extreme Beliefs project, led by Prof. dr. Rik Peels, and was informally connected to the Social Epistemology of Argumentation project, led by Prof. dr. Catarina Dutilh Novaes.

My dissertation, A Social Epistemology of Conspiracy Theories: The Causes and Effects of Stigmatizing Antagonistic Beliefs, asks what it means to believe a conspiracy theory, what reasons people have for doing so, and whether such reasons are ever any good. I co-organized the 2nd International Conference on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory (2023) and co-edited a special issue of Inquiry on The Applied Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory. It is a goal of mine to show philosophy's relevance to society, and, accordingly, I have given talks and workshops about conspiracy theories for Dutch government institutions, including the National Police, the Public Prosecution Service, and several municipalities.

My main field of research is (social) epistemology. Further domains I'm interested in include philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, philosophy of law, and, generally, empirically-informed approaches to philosophy. More specifically, I'm drawn to a range of contemporary, socially relevant phenomena, including deceptive advertising, multi-level marketing and predatory business structures more generally, cancel culture, religious extremism, and climate injustice.

My background is in law as well as philosophy, which has given me an interdisciplinary perspective from the start. The study of conspiracy theories has deepened that further, since it means learning from and working with psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, and others. Alongside my PhD, I teach at John Stuart Mill College, VU Amsterdam's PPE honours program. My full CV is available here.

I can be reached at j.c.m.duetz2@vu.nl.