About Janice Tzuling Chik

Janice Tzuling Chik is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University. She holds research affiliations at Oxford as Member of the Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, where she was also a Visiting Research Scholar (in 2017 and 2019), and as Senior Affiliate of the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Formerly, she was Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center (2023), as well as the Barry Research Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Pennsylvania (2019-20). She earned an AB at Princeton University, with degrees in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs) and in Musical Performance (specializing in violin performance). She earned an MA in Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Darrell K. Royal Fellow in Ethics and American Society, and a PhD Fellow in the Law and Philosophy Program. She earned her doctorate in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, UK, where she was the Scottish Overseas Research Award Scholar from 2010-2013.

Janice Chik has received research grants from the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, the Philosophical Quarterly Research Fund, and the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education. Her research spans the history of philosophy, focusing on the philosophy of action, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and human rights. Her work has been published in Synthese, the Review of Metaphysics, Routledge, New Blackfriars, University of Cambridge Press, T&T Clark Edinburgh, and other venues. She has given scholarly talks at universities in the US and abroad, including: Edinburgh, Oxford, Sharif University of Technology (Iran), the Fashion Institute of Technology, Holy Cross, Saint Louis University, Princeton, Cambridge, KU Leuven, University of Pennsylvania, Notre Dame, and the University of St Andrews. She teaches with a historical approach: her courses have included philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy of action and mind, and philosophy of nature.

Beyond philosophy, she is classically trained in violin, piano, and voice. She has performed in several orchestras, both collegiate and professional, including the Princeton University Orchestra as Principal Chair and Associate Concertmaster, the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Delaware Valley Philharmonic Orchestra. During her musical career she performed public masterclasses with Andrew Manze, the Tackas Quartet, and the Brentano Quartet. She was the winner of the 14th annual Tampa Bay Symphony Young Artist's Competition, the Orlando Music Society Piano Competition, and was twice awarded first prize in the FSMTA State Concerto Competition. She sang in the Schola Cantorum Princetoniensis at Princeton University, in its heyday. She is currently the faculty advisor of the St Cecilia Chamber Music Society at Ave Maria University which promotes live instrumental performance in the field.

She is married to the intellectual historian Dr. Michael Breidenbach, with whom she has a son, Paul Thomas.