Research in Philosophy at University of Hertfordshire: Areas of Focus and Staff Profiles, Study notes of United Kingdom Philosophy

Download Research in Philosophy at University of Hertfordshire: Areas of Focus and Staff Profiles and more Study notes United Kingdom Philosophy in PDF only on Docsity! Research Degrees in Philosophy University of Hertfordshire http://www.herts.ac.uk/philosophy/ Philosophy at Hertfordshire Research Focus and Strengths The research interests of individual staff members (see below) are diverse, wide ranging, and are not limited to a single philosophical tradition, school or period of philosophy. The topics they pursue often drive them to engage in interdisciplinary research. The department has several major areas of concentration and strength: • Ethics, broadly construed, including the relation between narrative, literature and ethics; virtue ethics; philosophical and religious aspects of love and friendship; the moral status of animals and the environment; moral agency; moral psychology; • Metaphysics, with strengths in time and space, perception, consciousness, idealism and structural realism; • Philosophy and Ethics of Information; • Philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science, especially, on topics relating to information; representation; perception; consciousness; phenomenal consciousness; intersubjectivity; folk psychology and enactive, embodied, extended approaches to the mind, philosophy of AI. Research on these topics is both philosophically and empirically informed and focused; • The work of specific thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Sellars, and Wittgenstein. Research supervision areas include: • metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of fiction, philosophy of science: Craig Bourne • philosophy of perception, the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars, rule-following: Paul Coates • philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, metaphysics: Sam Coleman • epistemology, philosophy of information, philosophy of logic, information and computer ethics, philosophy of technology: Luciano Floridi • phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, hermeneutics, self and personal identity, philosophy of time: Shaun Gallagher • enactive, embodied and extended cognition, phenomenal experience, intentionality, folk psychology, narrative and personhood, metaphilosophy, Davidson, Wittgenstein: Daniel D. Hutto • philosophy of mathematics, Hegel, informal logic, philosophy of education: Brendan Larvor • Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, ethics (especially the virtues), continental philosophy of religion, philosophy and psychotherapy: John Lippitt • Wittgenstein, philosophy of literature, philosophy of art: Danièle Moyal-Sharrock. Research Support Research Environment In the 2008 RAE, 90% of the Department’s research was rated as ‘internationally recognised' or 'internationally excellent' in terms of originality, significance and rigour. With a wide range of projects and activities, the department offers a highly intellectually stimulating environment for postgraduate study, with graduate students, postdocs and visiting researchers engaged in advanced research (for staff research interests see below). The vibrant research culture at UH is also sustained by a host of other regular activities: • weekly research seminars , delivered by prominent external speakers, both national and international; • regular staff/postgraduate reading groups (recent texts discussed have included Christine Swanton’s Virtue Ethics: a pluralistic view and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age); • the Philosophy Society, run by students, organises talks and events such as the annual Philosophy Weekend, which is held at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park • multi-disciplinary research student and staff conferences organised by the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Institute (SSAHRI). • the Francis Bacon Lecture Series. These lectures, funded mainly by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, are thematic and focus on showing the relevance of philosophy beyond academia. The Department currently hosts: • two AHRC-funded projects: o The Construction of Personal Identities Online o The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities • three Marie Curie Fellowship projects: o Selves in Time: Temporal Emplacement and Affective Identification in Personal Identity Theory o The Ethics of Information Warfare: Risks, Rights and Responsibilities o Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity • the British Wittgenstein Society, which annually organizes a major international conference and a special lecture series, and provides research bursaries (see below) • two international, peer-reviewed journals, both published by Springer, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and Philosophy & Technology. • the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics. The Department has a steady influx of Visiting Researchers and active Socrates links, enabling staff exchanges with the University of Antwerp, Belgium; Bogazici University, Turkey; Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; and the Universities of Genoa, Modena and Bologna, Italy. Staff Profiles Craig Bourne, BA, MA, MPhil, PhD (Cambridge) Senior Lecturer in Philosophy Bourne’s main research interests lie in metaphysics (particularly time and space), logic, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of fiction. He has published research in leading journals, such as Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Canadian Journal of Philosophy and Logique et Analyse. He is the author of A Future for Presentism (OUP, 2006) and Philosophical Ridings (Oneworld Publications, 2007). Paul Coates, BA, MA (Sussex), PhD (London) Professor of Mind and Metaphysics Coates’s current research interests are in the areas of perception and intentionality, consciousness and scientific realism, rule-following, and the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. He has published on these topics in several leading journals, including Mind, Philosophical Quarterly, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Philosophical Studies. He is the co-editor of Current Issues in Idealism (Thoemmes Press, 1996) and author of The Metaphysics of Perception: Wilfrid Sellars, Perceptual Consciousness and Critical Realism (Routledge, 2007). He is working on a book on the history of perception theory. Coates is currently the Principal Investigator of an AHRC funded three-year project to investigate the nature of phenomenal qualities. This will culminate with a major international conference to be held at UH in 2012. Sam Coleman, BA (Oxford), MPhil (Cambridge), PhD (London) Lecturer in Philosophy Coleman works on the philosophy of consciousness as this affects issues in ontology and the philosophy of perception. His main interest is in the nature of phenomenal qualities, their role in perception, and the ramifications of these issues for the materialist worldview. He also has interests in metaphysics (the nature of dispositions) and the extended mind hypothesis. Coleman has a paper forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy (entitled ‘There is no Argument that the Mind Extends’) and is currently working on papers defending an actualist account of dispositions, addressing the combination problem for panpsychism, and defending the description theory of reference. He is chief co-investigator on the Phenomenal Qualities Project, a three-year AHRC funded project running at the University of Hertfordshire, which brings psychologists and philosophers together to investigate the nature of sensory qualities. Luciano Floridi, Laurea (Rome “La Sapienza”), MPhil, PhD (Warwick), MA (Oxford) Professor of Philosophy of Information and UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics Floridi’s research interests are in the philosophy of information, information and computer ethics, the philosophy of technology, epistemology, and the philosophy of logic. He has published over a hundred articles in these areas in peer-reviewed journals and collections. His recent books are: The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Information – A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2010), and the Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (CUP, 2010). His forthcoming books are: Information Ethics and The Fourth Revolution – The Impact of Information Technologies on Human Life (both with OUP). He is a Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford and a Fellow of the AISB. Between 2005 and 2010 he was President of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy. In 2009, he was elected Gauss Professor by the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and awarded the Barwise Prize by the APA. In 2010, he was elected fellow of the Center for Information Policy Research, University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee and appointed editor in chief of Philosophy & Technology (Springer). In 2011, he received a laurea honoris causa from the University of Suceava, Romania. He is the principal investigator of the AHRC project “The Construction of Personal Identities Online” and ‘scientist in charge’ of the Marie Curie project “The Ethics of Information Warfare: Risks, Rights and Responsibilities”. Shaun Gallagher, BA (St. Columbans), MA Economics (State University of New York), MA Philosophy (Villanova), PhD (Bryn Mawr). Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Gallagher’s research focuses on the intersection between phenomenology and cognitive science, with special regard for embodied cognition, action, and social cognition. He has published over 100 articles and chapters in a variety of philosophical and scientific journals and collections. He is the author of How the Body Shapes the Mind (OUP, 2005), Brainstorming: Views and Interviews on the Mind (Imprint Academic, 2008), The Inordinance of Time (Northwestern, 1998), Hermeneutics and Education (SUNY, 1992), and with Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind (Routledge, 2007). He edited The Oxford Handbook of the Self (OUP), published in 2011, and is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Springer). Daniel D. Hutto, BA (Marist), MPhil (St. Andrews), DPhil (York) Professor of Philosophical Psychology Hutto’s research is a sustained attempt to understand human nature in a way which respects natural science but which nevertheless rejects the impersonal metaphysics of contemporary naturalism. He is author and editor of many books, including Narrative and Understanding Persons (CUP 2007), Folk Psychological Narratives (MIT 2008) and Narrative and Folk Psychology (Imprint Academic 2009). He is currently working on a co-authored book, Radicalizing Enactivism, for MIT Press, with Erk Myin (Antwerp). He is a chief co-investigator for the Australian Research Council ‘Embodied Virtues and Expertise' project (2010-2013) and a collaborator in the Marie Curie Action ‘Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity’ initial training network (2011-2015). He regularly speaks at conferences and expert meetings for clinical psychiatrists, educationalists, narratologists, neuroscientists and psychologists. In 2010, he launched a European Science Foundation-funded website dedicated to providing public resources for those interested in our capacities for Shaping , Sharing and Understanding Minds . Brendan Larvor, BA, MA (Oxford), MA (Queens, Ontario), DPhil (Oxford) Principal Lecturer in Philosophy Larvor specialises in the philosophy of mathematical practice. He also has interests in ethics, informal logic, philosophy of education and in the shortcomings of formal rationality theories. He publishes articles in his areas of specialism and is the author of Lakatos: An Introduction (Routledge, 1997). John Lippitt, BSc (Manchester), MLitt (Durham), PhD (Essex) Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and Head of the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Institute Lippitt’s interests include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, ethics, the relationship between philosophy and theology, the philosophy of love and friendship, the relevance of philosophy to psychotherapy and the philosophy of film and literature. He is the author of the Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling (Routledge, 2003) and Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought (Palgrave, 2000); editor of Nietzsche’s Futures (Macmillan, 1999); and joint-editor of Nietzsche and the Divine (Clinamen, 2000). He has also published in leading journals such as the British Journal of Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy Review, Inquiry, the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, The Monist, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Religious Studies. He is currently working on two further monographs: Kierkegaard and the Problem of Self-love (for CUP) and Self-Love (for Acumen); and co-editing The Oxford Handbook to Kierkegaard with George Pattison (OUP). He is ‘scientist in charge’ of the Marie Curie “Selves in Time” project, working on Kierkegaard and selfhood with Dr Patrick Stokes. Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, BA, MA (Montreal), PhD (Paris), PhD (Geneva) Senior Lecturer in Philosophy Moyal-Sharrock’s interests include Wittgenstein, Aristotle, philosophy of art, philosophy of literature and aesthetics. Her focus has been on Wittgenstein’s post-Investigations works, particularly On Certainty and the writings on philosophical psychology. She is the author of Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and the editor of The Third Wittgenstein (Ashgate, 2004), Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Perspicuous Presentations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and the translator, in French, of On Certainty. She is currently working on a volume of essays: Certainty in Action. Moyal-Sharrock is the founder and president of the British Wittgenstein Society. The University The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is among the most successful new universities in the UK (source: Financial Times), with a flourishing community of over 24,000 students, including more than 2,000 international students from over 85 different countries. There are more than 99 different cultures represented on campus. The male to female ratio is 47:53 (information updated to 2009). Applications were up by almost 16 per cent at the start of 2009 (source: Times Online). Hertfordshire produced some of the best results of any post-1992 university in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, with approaching half of its submission judged to be ‘world-leading’ or internationally excellent (source: Times Online). In 2010, the University won the prestigious Times Higher Education ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year’ award. 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