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PG Work in Progress Seminar

About the WiP

The Postgraduate Work in Progress (WiP) Seminar is a student-organised session intended to provide all philosophy graduate students, and occasionally graduate students undertaking philosophy projects in other departments, with the platform to present and discuss their ongoing research.

All philosophy PGs, whether MA, MPhil, or PhD, are encouraged to attend, and faculty members and visitors to the department are very welcome. No extensive knowledge of the week’s topic is necessary.

The seminar offers an invaluable opportunity for graduates to present their work in a friendly, supportive, unassessed setting, and receive vital peer-review feedback and tips, allowing them to improve and practise defence of their work, as well as to get to know and socialise with fellow students and members of the wider department.

Seminars normally take place on Thursdays, from 5:00pm until 6:15pm in S2.77, and can also be attended online on via Teams. The title and abstract for each talk along with a Teams link is circulated to all PG students on a Monday.

The format will consist of a roughly 30-minute presentation of a paper, followed by a roughly 30-minute open discussion and Q&A.

Current term schedule

A list of seminars occurring in the current academic term can be found below.

Term 2 (2023-2024) Schedule

Thursday 11th January - Aurian De Briey - 'From Heidegger's social ontology to his answer to the technological challenge'
Thursday 18th January - Emily Boocock - 'Some Characteristic Features of Extremist Ideology'
Thursday 25th January - Chris Hall - 'Knowing What We're Doing'
Thursday 1st February - Sara Gorea - 'Sideways music and sideways obligations'
Thursday 8th February - Gustavo Ruiz da Silva - 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography'
Thursday 15th February - Lumeng Liu
Thursday 22nd February - Simon Gansinger
Thursday 29th February - Efan Owen
Thursday 7th March - Harland Cossons
Thursday 14th March - Oscar North-Concar

Previous term schedule

Term 1 (2023-2024) Schedule

Friday 6th October - Clarissa Mueller - 'A Phenomenology of Neurodivergence'
Thursday 12th October - Eve Poirier - 'Plausible Abstractions: The role of fiction, truth and history in Genealogy and State of Nature Philosophy'
Thursday 19th October - Aurian de Briey - 'The Articulation between Liberty and Happiness'
Thursday 26th October - Ben Campion - 'Videogame Photography Returns: Photography versus ‘the Photographic’
Thursday 2nd November - Elias Girma Wondimu - 'Mixed-Raced Inclusion: Revising Existing Definitions of Race'
Thursday 9th November - Johan Heemskerk
Thursday 16th November - Haley Burke
Thursday 23rd November - Fridolin Neumann
Thursday 30th November - Oscar North-Concar - 'A Problem For Objectivism in Ethics'
Thursday 7th December - Marco Rienzi

Notes for presenters

There is no strict minimum or maximum limit on paper length, and you may present an entire paper, a chapter of a thesis, an article, or outline the scope of a project, etc. The general recommendation is 3000-5000 words, as your work should be amenable to summation within 30 minutes.

Please provide your title and abstract to the WiP organisers by the end of the Sunday on the week you are presenting.

Please keep in mind that the seminar is best used to gather valuable suggestions with which to improve to your work, and to gain experience in presenting your work. As such, your work does not need to be a watertight, polished piece, but may be a draft or substantial set of notes. You are welcome to share work at all stages of the writing process.

Contact the organisers

If you would like to present at the WiP or have any questions about it, please email both Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk) and Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk).


 

Next talk:

Thursday 8th February 2024, 5pm, S2.77
Gustavo Ruiz da Silva: 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography'

WiP Organisers 23/24:

Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk)

Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk)

   

 

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Postgraduate Work in Progress Seminar

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Location: S2.77/online

Simon Gransinger and Bernardo Ferro will present their papers on 'Hegel on the hierarchy of rights: Civil society and the state in modern political life’, at the PG Work in Progress Seminar. Please, find the abstract below. 

This session will build on a dialogical presentation of two papers. In order to give enough time to both of the speakers and have some time for a Q&A, the seminar will last until 6.30pm. After that, there is a table waiting for us at the Dirty Duck!

Be aware that the WiPS will now take place in the room S2.77 (next to the common kitchen on the second floor). For those of you who wish to attend online, here is the link to the call.

 Abstract:

In the Philosophy of Right, GWF Hegel encourages us to think of society as a hierarchical order: the family, the market, civic associations, property-rights—all of this is normatively subordinate to the state. If we follow Hegel's mature political theory (and if we oppose some of its liberal interpretations), the political whole takes absolute precedence over the various interests of civil society.

Against this background, Bernardo focusses on the Philosophy of Right’s economic dimension. He argues that Hegel’s views on modern political economy can only be fully grasped in light of the speculative logic that animates his work as a whole, and which most economic interpreters tend to ignore.

Simon examines the implications for a theory of law. For Hegel, the enforcement of legal rights is conditional on their minimal compatibility with the interests of the state. Thus understood, courts do not articulate the law in a political vacuum. Legal reasoning is a species of political reasoning.

 

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