While an MA student at the University of Windsor, Dr. Tonkens made numerous conference presentations and published "Fodor versus Pinker: A Critical Analysis of a Debate over How the Mind Works" (based on a term paper) in De Philosophia, and "A Reply to Cholbi's Suicide Intervention and Non-Ideal Kantian Theory" (based on his MA thesis) in the Journal of Applied Philosophy. After graduating from Windsor, he went on to complete (2012) a Ph.D. at York University. In the process he won the International Association for Computing and Philosophy Goldberg award for graduate students and published several more papers. Dr. Tonkens completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Novel Tech Ethics at Dalhousie University (Faculty of Medicine), and begins a 3-year faculty position at Monash University (Australia) in 2013.