21st Annual Waterloo Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

The Waterloo PGSA Conference is held on a yearly basis. It hosts Philosophy graduate students from across North America, featuring papers on any topic in philosophy. The Conference usually takes place in the Spring of each year. In the past, the event has submissions from students at top universities around the world, including Oxford, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, and Toronto.

Among the profession at large, the Waterloo PGSA Conference is well regarded as a graduate conference. Past keynote speakers have included Helen Longino, Patricia Churchland, Lee Smolin, and many other accomplished philosophers. This continues in the department's tradition of hosting the highest profile special guest speakers for the purposes of teaching and interacting with the graduate students, which on one occasion included Gareth Evans and GEM Anscombe.

Historically, the success of the conference has owed in part to funding which was supplied by Eidos, Waterloo's former undergraduate journal. Eidos published the highest quality work from graduate students, and occasionally from well-established figures in philosophy (perhaps the most significant being Profs. WVO Quine, Charles Taylor, and Michael Ruse).