Vaughana Feary PhD received her doctorate from the University of Arizona. Her original AOS was Ethics, Social/ Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Law. She often spent extended periods in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with New Orleans as home base, where she taught Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Humanities at Southern University during the turbulent early seventies when all Louisiana state universities were all under Court Order to integrate. After her move to New Jersey, she taught Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, NJ.

Vaughana is a former President of the American Society for Philosophy Counseling and Psychotherapy and is Vice President and a founding Board member of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA). She is Program Director and a founding Board member of Excalibur: A Center for Applied Ethics.

Vaughana’s practice and research interests have often centered on the application of philosophical practice to resolving social problems: crime and recidivism, substance abuse, deficiencies in our mental health system, homelessness etc. She has designed and delivered numerous programs for corporations, correctional facilities, hospitals, and homeless shelters. She is always interested in pioneering new areas of philosophical practice. She was the first to do philosophical group counseling in prisons and with cancer patients, and the first in the US to teach a university course in philosophical counseling, Other long term interests are crisis, refugee, and multicultural counseling, as well as the use of art and literature in philosophical counseling.

She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters including recently: “Philosophical Practice from Feminist Perspectives” in Practicing Philosophy ed. Alexandar Fatic and Lydia Amir, “Philosophical Interventions with Psychiatric Patients” in Philosophical Practice . Vol.3, November 2018), and “ Philosophical Counseling in the Renaissance and Its Use in Shakespeare’s Othello” Philosophical Practice, Bol.17 March 2022

Vaughana is currently taking a leave of absence from group counseling and organizational consulting to pursue other interests (poetry, painting and photography) as well as to explore the creation of a new non-profit structure which will support in-person pilot programs (which can be replicated elsewhere) integrating philosophical practice with various therapies and social objectives.