The 2016 NSS Survey results have been released, confirming an overall 89% level for student satisfaction for students in the Department of Philosophy.

Notably, 90% of students in the department were satisfied with the teaching on their course. This included 95% of students in the department agreeing that their course was intellectually stimulating and 93% that staff were good at explaining things.

The Philosophy and Literature course in particular has this year received some very high ratings, with 98% of respondents on this course stating they were satisfied with the teaching, and 91% for academic support. The Philosophy and Literature course also received 100% agreement from respondents for a number of questions: ‘Staff have made the subject interesting’, ‘Staff are enthusiastic about what they are teaching’, ‘The course is intellectually stimulating’, ‘I have been able to contact staff when I needed to’.

It is good news to receive these strong overall levels of satisfaction from students in the department, and looking ahead, we hope to continue to work together with students and staff on this in the coming academic year.

From January 2017, Warwick will be hosting a new interdisciplinary research project Time: Between Metaphysics and Psychology, funded by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The aim of the project is to bring debates about the metaphysics of time, which often invoke claims about our experience of time, into contact with actual research in psychology on the origins and nature of our everyday understanding of time. The three-year project, which will be lead by Christoph Hoerl (Philosophy, Warwick) and Teresa McCormack (Psychology, Belfast), will involve two 2-year postdocs (one in philosophy, one in psychology), a series of workshops and public engagement activities, as well as collaborations with a range of performing arts groups.

Thank you for all of the entries which we received to our photo competition 2016. We saw some excellent interpretations of the theme, and we look forward to using your photographs to promote our department.

We are very pleased to announce the winners of our competition ‘What Philosophy means to me’ are as follows:

The judges were highly impressed with the creative, innovative and intelligent entries that these students submitted - a big congratulations goes to the above students!

The judges would also like to give special mention to the following students, whose entries were highly commended:

• Sophie Davies
• Suida Hasan

A big thank you to all those who have taken part in this year’s competition!

Best wishes

Kat Moore (Senior Marketing Assistant, Philosophy) and Karen Simecek (Director of Student Experience and Progression, Philosophy)

Two articles by Eileen John have been highlighted as contributions to aesthetics:

'Literature and Disagreement' as one of the top five articles in aesthetics in 2014, by Aesthetics for Birds and 'Meals, Art, and Artistic Value' as Article of the Year 2015 by the Slovak and Finnish Aesthetics societies.

The Department of Philosophy is delighted to announce that Dr Alisa Mandrigin, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department has been awarded a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Research Award for 2016 (one of only 29 awards made from a high-calibre field of applications). This scheme provides funding of up to £15,000 to distinguished Early Career Researchers to assist their career development through organising interdisciplinary events for other Early Career Researchers and Alisa’s project will run from April 2016 to March 2017.