About the Care Lab

We are evaluating the role of care in human life and working toward a society in which care is provided in ways that meet needs while respecting the freedom of every individual. A philosophical research lab, the Care Lab is a cross-campus collaboration at Stony Brook University moored in the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics in the Renaissance School of Medicine. The Lab annually hosts visiting philosophers and runs a student-centered think tank for mentored research on care.

History of the Care Lab

Feminist philosopher Asha L. Bhandary, Founding Director, first founded the Care Lab at the University of Iowa (Iowa Care Lab) from 2025-2026 before bringing it to Stony Brook University in 2026. It seeks to build feminist philosophies of care into the medical understandings while enriching philosophical understandings of care, embodiment and relationality with recent scientific findings into the effects of stress, reproductive inequalities, and population health disparities, thereby fostering research collaborations at the frontier of care theory and understandings of the human being.