Introducing... Campbell Brown

After a year as a Visiting Instructor, Campbell Brown was offered a permanent position this Fall, thus doubling the department's Kiwi contingent. Campbell has led a varied life up to now. He was born in Christchurch, in New Zealand's South Island, and after living in such places as New Plymouth, Wellington and Mt. Mauganui, ended up in Auckland at the age of seven.

After finishing secondary school, he attended Carrington Polytechnic, which was located in a former psychiatric hospital, where he studied graphic design and explored the labrynthine cellars. He had always been interested in illustration and wanted to draw comics. After three years, however, he had not completed his course. Perhaps too much time was spent wandering aimlessly in those subterranean passages. One discovery he did make was that his friends who had gone to Auckland University seemed to be having a lot more fun than he was, so he decided to give it a try, starting his BA there in 1995. He read philosophy, political science, psychology and maths in his first year, but it was philosophy that really grabbed his interest. He quite liked political science too, but only in the areas that overlapped with philosophy. What drew him to philosophy? Mainly, he says, he liked to argue.

He received his BA in 1998 and then started working on an MA, also at the University of Auckland. His Master's thesis was entitled "Freedom and the Free Market" and examined whether supporters of freedom should in fact be supporters of free markets. After finishing his MA in 2000, he crossed the Tasman Sea as many a foolhardy Kiwi has done before, and started a PhD at the Australian National University in March of that year. His initial supervisor was Phillip Pettit, but he left for a job at Princeton, so Campbell worked under Geoffrey Brennan. His panel also included Michael Smith and Bob Goodin. He received his PhD in 2005.

The really important thing that happened to Campbell in 2000 was meeting the woman who was to be his wife, Emilka Radlinska, who at the time was studying towards a BFA in Ceramics at the ANU. They met at a rock concert. "Magic Dirt" was the opening band and Campbell certainly felt some of it stirring in the air that night (magic that is, not dirt), and by the time the headline band, "Powderfinger" came on, he was crowd surfing on a wave of something more powerful than just the smelly hands of Aussie rock fans. They were married in 2004.

He has acclimatised well to Bowling Green, becoming a keen follower of the Falcons, especially the football team. He has also taken to Fantasy Football in a big way, and enjoys poker and golf with his colleagues here. His other interests include music, both playing his own on the guitar, and listening to others. He proudly notes that he has 6,500 songs on his computer, which means that he could listen to it 24 hours a day for three weeks and not hear the same song twice. And it's all legal too! In addition to all this, he still likes to draw and finds time to blog on Pea Soup, a philosophical discussion forum.

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