Over time, I’ve gotten to write papers and work on projects that focus on my research interests and, more importantly, my passions. From reading dense philosophical papers, to writing lines of code in R Studio, to debating about chess history, I’ve completed a wide range of tasks in order to tackle. This page is dedicated to providing an overview of the papers, presentations, and projects that I’ve done during my undergraduate years.
My Papers and Projects Include…
Chess and Identity: How Can Feminism Influence Chess?
Chess is an incredibly international pastime. The top twenty-five women chess players represent twelve countries, including players from China, India, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. But gender bias still exists within chess– how do we discuss it,? More importantly, how do we tackle it?
Chess and The Law: Philosophical Rebellions
Despite being famed as a scholastic game, the chess world is no stranger to public scandals. One more recent case occurred at the 2024 World Rapids Chess Championship, where GM Magnus Carlsen refused to comply with the event dress code. Many philosophers have given us the framework to define what qualifies as a public rebellion– does Carlsen’s choice count?
Utilitarianism and Discussion of Disability
Harriet McBryde Johnson is a well-respected philosopher and disability activist, and one famed article of hers on the New York Times was about her discussions with Peter Singer, another significant philosopher with a stance that widely opposes her own. This paper is a defense of Johnson’s argument.
Middle School, Depression, and Healing: A Program Plan
This is a program planning project still in progress, but I’m working to design a program plan to address depressive symptoms in middle school students in Athens-Clarke County through an after-school program.
United States, Tanzania, and Cultural Variations
Over the summer in 2023, I participated in a study abroad that worked on the ground in Moshi, Tanzania. There, I took a cross-cultural psychology class, and my final project was an analysis on the cultural similarities and differences between these two countries. A focus was taken on community and transportation.
Organ Donation in Thailand, The United States, and Other Countries
Around the world, the demand for organs outweighs the availability for them, and different countries have different methods of counter-acting this struggle. This was a presentation given in May 2025 and was an analysis of how Thailand, the United States, and a list of other countries help their people with organ donation and healthcare.
Addressing Tables in “Neurologic Syndromes Predict Higher In-Hospital Mortality in COVID-19”
This was a project for my epidemiology class, where a classmate and I recreated the tables presented in an academic paper, using the publicly available data. The goal was to answer one question: Is it even possible to recreate all of the tables, given the information that was provided? The answer is complicated.
The Great Famines, Holodomor, and Asharshylyk — Soviet Famines in the 1930s
This was a presentation I gave during my fall 2025 semester that was an in-depth examination of a set of famines that occurred in Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan in the 1930s. This was not the first nor last famine to happen in these countries, and unlike other famines, was primarily driven by policies written by those in charge.
Georgia Prison Systems: A Case Study
Like the “Addressing Tables…” paper, this was a group paper that examined the Georgia prison system and the available resources for inmates who have been recently released, acting as a policy and resource analysis across the state.
Portfolio website -- Skylar Cannon 