Bio

I was born in Santa Fe, NM to rebellious parents drawn to the physical beauty and cultural freedom of the southwest. As an unintelligibly queer youth, I found my place in alternative art, music, literature circles. I chanced into participating in the Bali Art Project, and was able to spend some time in Bali studying the local art, music and culture. A year into majoring in music and art, I felt more drawn to the academic study of philosophy and math, and managed to transfer from UNM to Amherst College. Piecing together my intense (but vague) interests in AI, collaboration, semantics and logic, I had the good fortune to end up studying these topics in graduate school at Rutgers. The amazing group of people I met and learned from there changed everything, especially my life-partner and collaborator Sarah Murray.

In 2017, I was tenured at Cornell and we welcomed our first child into the world. Our second joined us during the midst of the pandemic in 2021.

I now use 'W. Starr' in print, and my name is 'Willow Starr'. In person, I go by both 'Willow' and 'Starr', and my pronouns are 'they'/'she'. I am a transgender non-binary femme (a femme 'non-binary woman', in the sense that I don't strictly identify as a man or a woman but present and socialize in ways that are typically associated with femme women). Sometimes queer identities get complicated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Beyond my professional life, I spend my time enjoying nature (primarily cycling and hiking) and building community through family, food justice, art, dance, music, and political struggle.

I am a first-generation college student, and have struggled throughout my life to navigate academia as a queer outsider. The makes me an especially passionate mentor for students and junior colleagues from marginalized backgrounds.

department of philosophy; cornell university; 218 goldwin smith hall; ithaca, ny; 14853