I am Executive Director of Houston Institute, which serves students at Rice University and the broader Houston area. 

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I received my PhD from Rice University in 2018, where I served as Lecturer from 2019-2024.

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I work primarily in the history of ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Aristotle's ethics and psychology. I've been recently thinking about Aristotle's claim that certain types of action and emotion are always wrong, regardless of the circumstances. I am also interested in similar themes in Plato. 

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More broadly, I'm interested in the Aristotelian tradition as seen, for example, in Aquinas, analytic ethicists such as Philippa Foot, and the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. I also like thinking about ethics (theoretical and applied), the history of ethics, and the philosophy of religion. ​

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You can contact me at vsaenz [at] houstoninstitute.org