Skip to main content

About

About Us

Being and Becoming

A Community for the Curious is a Toronto-based non-profit for public philosophy. We are dedicated to creating a community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we come to a richer understanding of the world around us. 

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Values

Our core values are curiosity, diversity, and inclusion. These values are at the core of all of our work.

  • Curiosity: Curiosity underpins our organization’s ethos. For us, curiosity represents a desire to learn more, a willingness to have difficult but important conversations, and openness to new ideas.
  • Diversity of Perspectives: We embrace diversity in all its forms, ensuring that a wide range of perspectives is represented and respected in our work and activities. One of our core beliefs is that discovery is richer, more stimulating, and simply more fun when undertaken alongside peers in a community that explores and respects a diversity of views.
  • Inclusion: In our activities and work we seek to enable people with a variety of backgrounds, needs, and beliefs the opportunity to feel empowered and able to take part in our activities. 
Member

Our Core Team

Sofia Panasiuk

President & Treasurer

Sofia is a PhD student at the University of Toronto studying well-being and happiness. She’s interested in bridging philosophy and psychology in conceptualizing what the “good life” is in theory and practice. When she’s not doing her doctoral research, she’s either listening to a history podcast, trying out a new recipe, or having a long conversation with a friend. She’s currently getting into bouldering and generally thrives whenever mountains, hiking and climbing are involved.

Marybel Menzies

Vice-President & Chair

Marybel is a PhD Student at the University of Toronto in the Department of Philosophy. She is most curious about what the nature of consciousness is, whether or not consciousness has value for the person who has it, and how our evaluative tendencies can influence our first-person conscious experiences. More broadly, she is interested in all questions to do with the mind, ethics, and psychology, and how science can inform those questions. For fun, she enjoys swimming, hiking, biking, cooking, travelling, and listening to music. Name an activity, and she would probably enjoy it!

Sophia Whicher

Director of Community Programs

Sophia just completed her Masters in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Outside of her work with Being and Becoming, she is currently channeling her love for Philosophy into leading tutorials and grading papers for undergraduate philosophy courses at the University of Toronto. Sophia enjoys all things that make her life sparkle, including long conversations, teaching, eating good food, and sharing experiences with her loved ones. Right now, she is most curious about the relationship between love and individual and collective liberation.

Heidi Knechtel

Director of Marketing

Heidi is a lifelong lover of wisdom and will be pursuing her MA in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is curious about the moral and existential value of love, the phenomenology of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and how philosophy can help people find and create meaning in their everyday lives. Outside of philosophy, Heidi works as a sexual health educator at the University of Toronto and Western University. In her free time, she enjoys reading novels, baking for her loved ones, and collecting all things pink.

Adrian Ma

Director of Communications

Adrian has a background in English literature and philosophy, and he does various forms of creative writing, including novels, essays, short stories, and poems. He is curious about life’s big questions broadly defined, including perennial questions about existence, meaning, death, love, beauty, and goodness, among other things. Adrian likes nothing better than a good conversation, and he is interested in how honest and genuine communication can make disagreements more productive and less toxic.

Zachary Grey

Director of Educational Programs

Zach is a PhD student studying the social psychology of morality. He is particularly interested in the topic of moral disagreement. He is a self-described “learnaholic”, spending much of his free time invested in learning more about different topics that catch his attention. Zach’s hobbies are listening to podcasts about philosophy, psychology, and behavioural science; watching educational youtube videos and documentaries; and consuming stories, regardless of the medium (books, poems, movies, plays and musicals, video games, etc.).

Dylan Michels

Director of People & Operations

Dylan’s academic journey spans Sociology, Criminology, Continental Philosophy, Industrial Relations, and Human Resources. Currently, Dylan contributes to The University of Toronto, where he plays a pivotal role in faculty recruitment and retention. His professional trajectory is underpinned by a commitment to nurturing spaces for challenging dialogues, recognizing them as vital catalysts for personal and collective growth. Outside of academia he immerses himself in literature, embraces the great outdoors through hiking, camping, and mountain climbing, and finds strength and balance through activities like bouldering and weightlifting.

Our Mission

What do we think is the problem?

In today’s increasingly divided and fast-paced world, there seems to be little time or place to grapple with life’s big questions. Questions like:

  • Who am I?
  • How should I live?
  • What is the nature of good and evil?
  • What can I do to combat injustices?
  • What is the nature of love, family, and friendship?

Questions like these are as relevant today as they have been for centuries, but it can be hard to find a community or a space where they can receive the attention they deserve.  We offer spaces to explore the big questions together in a spirit of collaboration and mutual inspiration.

What is our solution?

We believe that taking these questions seriously is key to our intellectual, psychological, and emotional well-being. 

Far from confining ourselves to the world of academic philosophy, we aim for a diverse representation of disciplines among our leadership, our audience, and our guests, who will include artists, teachers, writers, as well as philosophers. We also seek to offer a diverse range of activities in our events,  from formal soiree’s to open mic nights to discussion cafes, and more! In other words, there’s something for everyone.

We are committed to listening and learning from the desires, needs, and interests of our members. We aim to highlight and explore the work that is being done in academic and non-academic spaces to build stronger connections in the community. 

Since September 2023, we have made significant progress toward our goals in our accomplishments, including:

The launch of Curiosity Café, a public bi-weekly philosophy cafe “on the questions that matter”

Our bi-weekly newsletter

Our Instagram, the hub for all things Being and Becoming, where we poll our community, recieve feedback and suggestions for future events, and keep our community up to date with what we are up to!

We have also achieved non-profit status, allowing us to begin pursuing even more of our goals in continuing to build a community around philosophical inquiry in Toronto. In the future, this will hopefully include a highschool lecture series, hosting open mic nights for our community members, and throwing an annual summer philosophy festival!