Rate My Professor Charles Gibson

Dr Charles Gibson is the Specialist for Academic Committees and Services in the Division of Sciences at the University of Otago. In this embedded role, he supports the Sciences Divisional Academic Board and Standing Committee by managing academic proposals, meeting schedules, course variation forms, and related governance processes. He contributes to the efficient functioning of academic administration within the sciences, including liaison with the Academic Committees Office for senate and university-level matters. His professional contact details are telephone +64 3 556 7814.

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.