ToPNA_RoM Dataset – Doctoral Dissertations, Supervisions and Institutional Affiliations in Philosophy in the US and Canada: 1956–2017

ToPNA_RoM is a dataset of records of doctoral dissertations and supervisions contributing to the Tree of Philosophers (ToP), an infrastructure for the reconstruction of academic descent in philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, developed at Turin University. ToPNA_RoM aims to provide a way to map two kinds of institutional relations on a relatively large scale: doctoral supervisions and institutional affiliation of PhD candidates in philosophy in the US and Canada between 1956 and 2017. The data were retrieved from the Review of Metaphysics survey, which annually published records of PhD theses based on university submissions. These records were processed using semi-automated techniques and manual revisions. The workflow involved extracting text from PDF files, parsing it through regular expressions, and structuring it into a tabular format. The resulting dataset includes thesis authors, titles, supervisors, and the institutions where these theses were defended. ToPNA_RoM serves as both a valuable historical artifact and a resource for advancing the study of academic philosophy. The spread of doctoral programs in North American universities during the second half of the 20th century coincided with the professionalization of philosophy as an academic discipline and the rise of mid-late analytic philosophy. ToPNA_RoM makes underexploited but valuable historical data available in a machine-readable format, providing new insights into contemporary North American philosophy by capturing elements of its intellectual traditions and social dynamics.