We are delighted to announce the appointment, from 1 September 2020, of Dr Adina Covaci as a Teaching Fellow, specialising in moral and political Philosophy. Adina, who studied for her PhD at the University of Leeds, has previously taught at the University of Bristol. Adina will develop her research interests during her Fellowship, which include moral deference and topics in applied ethics, and will undertake teaching in both moral and political philosophy.

Lorenzo Serini, currently studying for his PhD in Philosophy with the Department, has been awarded an IATL/IAS Early Career Teaching Fellowship, from October 2020 to July 2021. During the Fellowship, Lorenzo will develop both his teaching and research profile, and will contribute to teaching in the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL). Lorenzo will also organise and deliver an interdisciplinary event on the Emotions, bringing together students and speakers from multiple Departments, and will prepare a number of publications and postdoctoral applications. Congratulations, Lorenzo!

Vera Okojie has been selected as one of the winners in the University’s Outstanding Student Contribution Awards for 2020.

This award to Vera, who graduated with a Degree in Philosophy in June, recognises both her enormous dedication to the life of the Department and to the University community as a whole, as well as her significant achievements academically.

Vera will be presented with her Award at her postponed Graduation Ceremony, when new dates are announced.

Congratulations, Vera!

 Dr Thomas Crowther is a Commendee in this year’s WATE Awards, which recognises his outstanding contribution to the teaching of Philosophy during the course of this academic year. Tom says:

I am very happy to have been recognised through WATE. I am very proud to be a teacher, and particularly proud to be a teacher at the University of Warwick. I care very much about the work I do in teaching and supporting my students, whether it is inside or outside the classroom. Being recognized by WATE is evidence that I am doing at least something right! This will invigorate me to develop further as a teacher; particularly in negotiating the challenges of moving to blended learning.

Irene Dal Poz and Lorenzo Serini have also won awards in the WATE PGR category. This award acknowledges respectively both Irene and Lorenzo’s gifts of communication and their imaginative flair for engaging students through their teaching. 

We are delighted to announce excellent student feedback in the 2020 National Student Survey (NSS). Notably, the Philosophy BA course received 100% overall satisfaction. We also celebrate strong scores across Philosophy courses (including PPE), particularly in the areas of Teaching Assessment, Feedback, Academic Support and Student Voice, all of which demonstrate a very high level of satisfaction.

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.