The Philosophy Department has repeated its strong performance from last year, and features again in the Top Ten rankings for UK philosophy courses, published by The Complete University Guide for 2021. The Department receives consistently high weightings across a range of categories, including Student Satisfaction, Research Quality and Intensity, and Graduate Prospects.

Three members of the Philosophy Department have been nominated in this year’s WATE and WATE PGR Awards for their outstanding contribution to Teaching Excellence.

Dr Thomas Crowther has been shortlisted for this year’s WATE Awards in recognition of his inspirational teaching – as well as his dedication to outreach and well-being support for philosophy students. Irene Dal Poz and Lorenzo Serini, both studying for PhDs in Philosophy, have been shortlisted for the WATE PGR Awards. This nomination recognises Irene’s and Lorenzo’s natural flair for teaching in the classroom, as well as their ability to engage and motivate students. Congratulations to all three shortlisted candidates on their nominations. Winners of both categories will be announced in the summer.

Dr Walter Dean has been awarded an 18-month long Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The Fellowship will fund Walter's continuing research on the role of arithmetical methods in Hilbert's program and related developments in computability theory and reverse mathematics. Among the topics he will explore are whether arithmetisation provides a uniform assimilation of the paradoxes of set theory and semantics to incompleteness phenomena and the legacy of the slogan 'consistency implies existence' (which is often associated with Hilbert) in contemporary model theory. Walter will be based at the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy for the duration of the Fellowship.

Dr Patrick Tomlin has been awarded a year-long Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust, to run throughout 2021. The Fellowship will fund Patrick’s continuing research into the concept of proportionate harm or violence. There is widespread agreement between philosophers working on the ethics of war, self-defence, punishment and many other areas that, if harm or violence is to be justified, it must be proportionate. Patrick will use his Fellowship to develop the argument that this apparent consensus conceals a wide range of knotty philosophical puzzles about proportionality, including how to make proportionality calculations under uncertainty; what the relationship is between the proportionality of courses of action and individual acts; and how we should aggregate small harms or goods in thinking about proportionality. Patrick will publish his research on proportionality in a book which will be published by Oxford University Press.

Ronja Griep, a former PPE Graduate with the Philosophy Department, has been awarded a prestigious Gates Postgraduate Scholarship at the University of Cambridge, commencing in the Autumn of 2020.

The Gates Cambridge Class of 2020 consists of only 77 scholars, originating from 30 different countries, and are some of the most academically outstanding and socially committed postgraduates involved in research today.

Ronja, who has been accepted to undertake a PhD in Philosophy from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, has written about Climate Crisis, Political and Feminist Philosophy, Social Housing and the implications of Hate Speech for Equal Citizenship, among other subjects. Support from the Gates Scholarship programme will allow her to continue her studies into these and other areas of research, and to explore further those political movements that work with and support victims of Hate Speech.

The International Gates Postgraduate Scholarship programme was launched with a $210 million donation from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Since 2001, over 1,700 scholarships have been awarded to outstanding Postgraduate students from over 100 countries worldwide.