Kimberly S. Engels

Kimberly S. Engels is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Molloy University, Research Director at the John Mack Institute, and Advisory Board Member for the Society for UAP Studies. Her philosophical research focuses on existentialism, phenomenology, and ethics. Her UFO research interests lie in the lived conscious experience of individuals who report UFO encounters, and how they integrate these experiences into their understanding of self, other, and world. She is the host of the Youtube series Phenomenology of the Phenomenon, produced by the Society for UAP Studies. Her most recent articles include "The importance of phenomenology for UAP studies" in Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies, and “Reviving Philosophical Discussion of Close Encounters through the Strieber Letters: Understanding Close Encounters as Subversive, Transformative Experiences,” in Theology and Philosophy.

"In this talk, I argue that the close encounter experience serves as an initiatory process into a new form of ethical reasoning. I argue that close encounter experiences open individuals up to a multi-dimensional understanding of self, and consequently to a multi-dimensional understanding of ethics, that involves making moral judgments at three levels: embodied earthly interactions, interspecies interactions, and transcendent, interdimensional interactions. I explore how foundational concepts in western ethics like agency, autonomy, and consequence are fundamentally transformed."