Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo

Mercedes Valmisa joined the Gettysburg Philosophy faculty in 2018 after completing her Ph.D. at Princeton University (2017) and her M.A. at National Taiwan University (2011). During the 2018-2019 academic year, she held the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship, a program to support faculty who enhance curricular diversity.

Combining scholarship in Chinese and Asian philosophy, Chinese studies, and the Anglo-European tradition, Mercedes works at the intersection of metaphysics, social philosophy, and philosophy of action, pursuing questions of agency, autonomy, uncertainty, and freedom within a relational ontology.

Mercedes’ first monograph, Adapting. A Chinese Philosophy of Action (OUP 2021), reconstructs an extraordinary strategy for effective relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency—what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin 因). This Aeon essay presents some of the main insights of Adapting. She talks about her research on adapting and philosophy of action in this New Books Network interview.

Her new book, All Things Act (OUP 2025), explores agency as a collective process distributed across a heterogeneous network of human and nonhuman actors. Drawing insights from Chinese philosophies and contemporary Anglo-European thinkers, it reimagines actions as inherently relational, which compels us to rethink our identities, intentions, powers, emotions, institutions, policies, and values in a less individualistic manner.

Her seminars are strongly based on discussion of primary sources, and designed to create critical awareness of the existing diversity in philosophical traditions. She invites her students to problematize and challenge the mainstream Anglo-European approach to philosophy through the perspective of alternative philosophical practices such as those of Asia. 

Mercedes is a native speaker of Spanish, and fluent in English, French, and Mandarin. She can also read Classical Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese. She enjoys collaborating with students on multilingual research, as well as engaging in interdisciplinary and pluralistic explorations. 

Mercedes currently is the President of the Association of Chinese Philosophers in America (ACPA) and serves on the board of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy (EACP).

Her publications and teaching materials are available here and here.