Ding is a political philosopher and social metaphysician specializing in conceptual, normative, and jurisprudential issues about gender and its embodiment. They are most fascinated by the myriad ways legal, medical, and carceral institutions define, administer, discipline, and reify gender from the top down through hidden but operative conceptual frameworks. In turn, her research develops an alternative theory of what gender is and how it works that begins with queer trans women of color’s lived material realities and insurgent gender practices from the ground up. Ding came to Barnard in 2025 after finishing graduate work at the University of Arizona in the gorgeous Sonoran Desert.
Preprints are available on Ding’s website: https://dingherself.com
- B.A., The Ohio State University
- Ph.D., University of Arizona
- Political and Legal Philosophy
- Social Metaphysics
- Feminist, Queer, and Trans Theory
- “The Cisgender Tipping Point,” APA Studies on LGBTQ Philosophy 25.1 (Fall 2025), forthcoming.
- “Pregnant Persons as a Gender Category: A Trans Feminist Analysis of Pregnancy Discrimination,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 50, no. 3 (Spring 2025), 733–57.
- Being Trans in Philosophy, no. 0 (June 2025), co-edited with Willow Starr.
- “Gender, Equality, and Feminism through a Philosopher’s Lens,” Pride Month interview with the University of Arizona College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, June 20, 2024.
- “Putting Gender Back into Transgender Equality: On Iglesias v. Federal Bureau of Prisons,” APA Blog, Law & Philosophy Series, September 21, 2023.