Current & Recent Funded Research Projects
Current Projects
| Name | Funder | Description | Principal Investigator |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Co-Creational Model for the News Media | AHRC Follow-on Fund | The news media industry has been disrupted – for better and worse – by the rise of social media. The traditional news media once played a dominant role in political debate. Journalism enshrined certain standards of truth-seeking and truth-telling but privileged the relatively elite voices of broadcasters and newspaper owners. Social media ofers new opportunities for the public to participate directly in social and political debate but creates risks of misinformation and polarisation. Can we fnd the best of both worlds? Can we reconcile the truth-oriented norms of professional journalism with social media's participatory opportunities? |
Fabienne PeterLink opens in a new window |
| The Communicative Mind 2Link opens in a new window | UKRI (Future Leaders Fellowship) | The Communicative Mind is a UKRI-funded interdisciplinary project that will investigate the developmental relationship between 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) and communication in ontogeny, phylogeny, and in human history. We will use the methods of Philosophy, Developmental and Comparative Psychology, and Comparative Linguistics to evaluate evidence for the possibility that uniquely human forms of ToM are language-dependent cultural tools invented and refined by our ancestors for better explaining behaviour. We will also set out to explain why only humans use the natural languages that seemingly make higher forms of ToM reasoning possible. | Richard MooreLink opens in a new window |
| Spurs to Thought: Engaging Philosophically with Contemporary Art" | Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship |
“Spurs to Thought: Engaging Philosophically with Contemporary Art” is a Leverhulme Trust funded research project. The main goal of the project is to propose a new model for doing substantive work in philosophy of art that departs from standard methdologies in both analytic and continental aesthetics. The bulk of the associated monograph will comprise stand-alone chapters on two or three works by a particular contemporary artist, approaching these works in the light of some concept of philosophical interest. I call the proposed method “philosophical criticism:” It is critical because one first needs to work out what concepts a given work of art calls for, where this need not be obvious; It is philosophical because the method engages with those concepts with the seriousness that philosophy requires. The upshot is to give up on generalization, as the cost of making substantive claims about particular works, but do so without giving contentious, metaphysically or normatively thick, philosophical premises a pass. The former distinguishes “philosophical criticism” from dominant methodology in analytic philosophy of art, the latter distinguishes it from business as usual in continental philosophy of art. |
Diarmuid Costello |
| "Embodied Voices: Ethics and politics of voice and body in performance" | AHRC Research Network |
This multidisciplinary network brings together academics with expertise in the performing arts, body aesthetics, feminism and ethics with practitioners of the performing arts to provide analysis of the embodied voice in performance: What happens when artists invoke other voices in their work, and how does this shape the work's reception? What are the implications of performing someone else's lived experience, such as a work that makes reference to another's body? Our goal is to develop an urgently needed ethical framework to help the sector negotiate these complex issues and improve representation, inclusion and equality for unjustly marginalised groups in the performing arts. |
Karen SimecekLink opens in a new window |
Recent Projects
| Name | Funder | Description | Principal Investigator |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Communicative Mind | UKRI (Future Leaders Fellowship) | The project will use the tools of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to develop a new account of the developmental relationship between 'mindreading' and communication. | Richard Moore |
| Empowering Young Voices: performing poetry as a practice of social justice | British Academy/ Leverhulme | Young people (14–24-year-olds) across the UK are increasingly turning to performance poetry as a mode of expression, inspired by poets such as Kae Tempest, George the Poet, and Amanda Gorman. While there is evidence of performance poetry playing a role in improving literacy, creativity and expression, there is little or no discussion of the power of performance poetry to enable marginalized young people to discover their voices in matters of social justice. In collaboration with leading performance poets and youth organisation, Coventry Boys and Girls Club, our research focuses on the power of performance poetry in empowering young people who struggle to have their voices heard. |
Karen Simecek Andrew Cooper (Co-I) |
| Rethinking the Philosophy of Terrorism |
AHRC (Research Network Grant) |
This project brings together philosophers, terrorism researchers and non-academic stakeholders in a joint research network. The main objectives of this network are to initiate a cross-disciplinary dialogue between theoretical philosophy and terrorism studies, establish the metaphysics and epistemology of terrorism and counterterrorism as new and valuable fields of research, and influence official thinking about terrorism and counterterrorism. This is the first research network of its kind. |
Quassim Cassam Richard English (Co-I, QUB) |
| The London Post-Kantian Seminar |
AHRC (Research Network Grant) |
The LPKS exists to promote and celebrate research in Post-Kantian philosophy across the United Kingdom, with a special focus on London as a centre of international collaboration. Our goal is to provide a hub for experienced scholars, early career researchers and post-graduate students to share conversation and work together on world-leading research. The LPKS hosts a regular workshop series that rotates through philosophy departments across London, a work-in-progress session for graduate students, and an annual public talk at Senate House. Participating institutions include Birkbeck, UCL, Kingston, Roehampton, KCL, Royal Holloway and Warwick. | Andrew Cooper (Co-I) |
| Exploitation and Procedural Justice: An Experimental Assessment |
British Academy/ Leverhulme |
When is a transaction fair? Some philosophers and economists defend substantive accounts of transactional fairness, which claim transactions are fair when the benefits they provide conform to a particular distributive criterion. Others defend procedural accounts which do not define transactional fairness with reference to any particular distribution of benefits. Instead, they argue that transactions are unfair when the distribution is affected by some kind of procedural flaw. When is a transaction exploitative? Some accounts of exploitation characterise it as tantamount to unfair transaction, so that transactions are exploitative if and only if they are unfair. Other accounts argue that exploitation involves something more than mere unfairness, such as domination, the exercise of power, or some form of intentionality. Philosophers and economists have provided numerous normative and theoretical arguments defending both sides of these two debates. However, their arguments have mostly been made from the armchair. Little attention has been paid to the normative views actually held by individuals in the economy. We aim to fill this lacuna by empirically examining subjects’ attitudes towards (a) transactional fairness and (b) exploitation, in an experimental setting. | Ben Ferguson |
| Norms for the New Public Sphere |
AHRC |
In less than two decades social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube have fundamentally changed how societies discuss ideas of political and social importance. Much political debate is now taking place online and even traditional forums of political debate – such as the news media and parliament – are shaped by the social media. Because this new digital public sphere offers both benefits and challenges for democracy, it has become clear that social media regulation plays an important role in the future of democracy. But what should regulation aim at? Our collaborative research project on Norms for the New Public Sphere examines the philosophical foundations of a healthy democratic public sphere for the digital age. | Fabienne Peter |