Departmental news

We are delighted to announce that James Openshaw, currently based at The University of Edinburgh, has been awarded an Analysis and Mind Association Studentship, and will join the Department of Philosophy in October 2020 as a Postdoctoral Researcher.

James’s interests range across Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology and the Philosophy of Language and, while at Warwick, he will continue his research on Singular Thought as an epistemic phenomenon.

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.

We are sorry to announce that, due to the situation with the coronavirus, the British Society of Aesthetics Synergy Conference: New Conversations on Poetry and Philosophy, scheduled for 16/17 March 2020, has been CANCELLED. We hope to re-schedule this when circumstances allow.

Firat Akova, who is studying for a PhD in Philosophy, has been awarded a place on the prestigious Early Career Conference Programme (ECCP) at the Global Priorities Institute (GPI) at the University of Oxford (8 June - 3 July 2020). On this programme, each participant is required to select and focus on a particular research project of fundamental importance to the question of how to do good effectively. The culmination of the ECCP is a conference, at which Programme participants present their project and its findings. The Global Priorities Institute is an interdisciplinary research centre, and conducts foundational research into doing good, using multiple disciplines - especially philosophy and economics - to achieve an effectiveness-based approach to global prioritisation.

This one day conference, co-organised by Diarmuid Costello with Jason Gaiger (University of Oxford), is a collaboration between the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford, the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, and the London Aesthetics Forum.

The conference will bring together leading philosophers of art and art theorists to focus in depth on major works of twenty-first century contemporary art. The aim is not to motivate general philosophical claims about the nature of contemporary art but rather to examine a single work or a short run of works by a particular artist and to consider this in light of the broader issues of philosophical interest that it might be thought to raise. The day aims to demonstrate that close attention to an individual work of art can be both critically and philosophically illuminating, and that this provides one model for substantive work in aesthetics, work that is not only philosophically serious but critically and historically sensitive.

The conference takes place at Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, and is supported by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics. Attendance is free but registration is required: https://sas.sym-online.com/registrationforms/ipbooking146412205723139316003573836291/done/

Keith Ansell-Pearson will be speaking about Henri Bergson on Time and the Emotions at the 'Time and Timelessness' event taking place in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, between 19-23 February 2020. Other speakers include Andrew Marr, A.C. Grayling and Blake Morrison, who will explore the many aspects of TIME. There will also be works of art on the theme by Sarah Lucas, Grenville Davey, Lol Sargent, David Baldry, and others.

'Time and Timelessness' is part of the Alive in the Universe initiative, launched by curator and art dealer Caroline Wiseman in 2018 at the London Art Fair, and it is the current overarching theme of the year-long programme of activities taking place at the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout. Admired by many as a 'tiny art temple by the sea' the Lookout has hosted an impressive and diverse mix of international artists, musicians, writers, philosophers and scientists for residencies and new work, inspired by their experiences of Aldeburgh and the surrounding area.