The latest news from the Department of Philosophy
New Head of the Department
February 2012
As of 01 February 2012, Professor Maria Rosa Antognazza has taken over from Professor Peter Adamson as the new Head of the Department of Philosophy at King's College London.
"I am honored to serve as Head of such an outstanding department and would like to thank my colleagues for their trust. We will work together to maintain our high international standing in both teaching and research."
Professor Mark Textor has assumed the position of Deputy Head of Department.
Video: David Papineau - On Telling What it is Like
February 2012
Professor David Papineau delivered a paper entitled 'On Telling What it is Like' at the Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference 2011 conference, on Human Experience and Nature, at the University of the West of England (UWE, Bristol).
The video of the talk has recently been made available, and you can view it on our broadcasts, media and podcasts pages.
Guest talks by members of our Department - Spring 2012
February 2012
A number of members of the Department will be speaking at overseas conferences over the coming months.
Professor Maria Rosa Antognazza will be giving a keynote lecture at The Fourth Annual "North Sea Early Modern Philosophy" workshop in Ghent , Belgium , July 18-19 2012. The workshop is on the theme of "Early Modern Consequentialism And Its Critics".
In April, Dr Clayton Littlejohn will talk at a workshop on Justification: normality and normativity at the Institut Jean Nicod or at the Collège de France (venue TBD – dates: 05-06 April 2012).
Professor David Papineau will give a talk entitled Representation and Perception as part of the Perception and Action Talk Series at the University of Antwerp on March 22 2012.
Professor Charles Travis will speak at a conference at Universidade Nova on 15-16 March 2012. He will then appear at a conference on the work in his most recent collection, Objectivity and the Parochial, in Bordeaux, on April 02-03 2012. He will then travel to Bern in June to speak at Hilary Putnam’s panegyric symposium, and also in the same month will speak in Lisbon on Wittgenstein, and at a conference in his honour at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
David Papineau is ‘In the Zone’
February 2012
On Friday 17 February 2012, Professor David Papineau delivered a lecture entitled ‘In the Zone’ for the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s 2011/2 lecture series on Philosophy and Sport, in Dr. Williams's Library, 14 Gordon Square.
Sporting success requires skills that are automatic yet intelligently tailored to circumstances. This dual requirement tells us much about both sport and human nature.
For further details of other lectures in the series, pleasevisit the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s webpage.
Maria Alvarez delivers keynote at The Good Fashion Show
February 2012
On Saturday 18 February, as part of London Fashion Week, Dr Maria Alvarez delivered a keynote presentation, covering themes on “ethics, aesthetics, sustainability, culture and fashion” at London House, Bloomsbury.
The Good Fashion Show was London Fashion Week’s largest off schedule event, and also featured a live runway show in the evening. For further information, see the attached flyer (pdf, 4.35MB) or visit their website.
Medical Ethics: Being Healthy and Doing Good
February 2012
Dr Elselijn Kingma recently recorded a discussion with Anja Steinbauer, President of Philosophy For All, and ethical philosophers Piers Benn and Carwyn Hooper.
[The purpose of the broadcast was] to discuss our responsibilities for our own health, government initiatives to makes us lead healthier lives, patient automomy and choices, as well as enter the minefield of organ transplant ethics.
The programme was broadcast on 07 February 2012 on Resonance FM, but is available as a podcast on the Philosophy Now website.
Four new appointments for 2012/3
February 2012
The Department of Philosophy has recently announced four positions for full-time faculty. Already ranked in the top three Philosophy departments in the UK in the 2008 research assessment, these additions will confirm KCL Philosophy as a world-leading centre for the subject.
The positions will confirm areas of traditional strength in the Department: ancient philosophy and the philosophy of mind, psychology and language.
A new appointment in Political Philosophy follows the recent hiring of Dr Andrea Sangiovanni, and these two hirings establish King’s as an important place for research and teaching in this area.
King’s already boasts the biggest and most comprehensive philosophy department in London, which has strengths in nearly all areas of contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy.
A final appointment will broaden the Department’s expertise still further, adding a post in German philosophy or Aesthetics, two of the few areas without a dedicated expert among the faculty.
Further details of these appointments will be announced on these pages when they are made.
Is our mind more than matter?
January 2012
Professor David Papineau recently appeared Premier radio programme Unbelievable debating the nature of mind with Professor Keith Ward (Research Fellow, Heythrop College).
You can listen to this podcast if you visit the Premier Radio website.
King's Philosophy scores highly in the 2011 Leiter report
December 2011
In the most recent Leiter report (2011), King’s was ranked the joint fourth top department in the UK, and was voted as particularly strong internationally in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Mathematical Logic and Ancient Philosophy.
To browse the rankings, and the full report, visit the Philosophical Gourmet report website.
Department of Philosophy at the Brazil-UK colloquium on Aspects of Rhetoric
December 2011
As part of International Week, the Department of Classics will host a three-day colloquium on Aspects of Rhetoric from 15-17 February 2012. The Department of Philosophy will also be involved, with Professor Peter Adamson, Dr Raphael Woolf, and Professor MM McCabe all participating.
Rhetorics have regularly been used to build shared communication. This colloquium will bring together classicists, Byzantinists, philosophers and literary critics in a series of talks on "Aspects of Rhetoric." The aim is to explore the poetics of rhetoric in a variety of genres showcasing the centrality of this vital aspect of ancient culture in both philosophy and literature, in Greek and Roman texts from 500 BC to late antiquity and beyond.
For further information, please visit the Colloquium webpage.
Peter Adamson discusses Heraclitus on In Our Time
December 2011
Professor Peter Adamson once again joined Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time on 08 December 2011, this time to discuss Heraclitus with James Warren and Angie Hobbs.
You can listen to the show via iPlayer, or visit the programme webpage.
Third annual King's-UNC conference on Epistemology in 2012
December 2011
The 3rd Annual King's/University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) Conference will be on the general topic of Epistemology, with an emphasis on social epistemology and epistemic responsibility.
Speakers from the UNC side are expected to include Ram Neta and Matthew Kotzen, with Clayton Littlejohn from King's. With extra visiting speakers to be confirmed, it could prove to be the most notable UK epistemology conferences of 2012.
The conference will be organised by Helena Drage and Leandro De Brasi, of King's. The scheduling and and full speaker list will announced early in 2012, so watch this space.
PhD student to become visiting scholar at Princeton
December 2011
The Department is pleased to announce that Stefan Wagner, a PhD student at the Centre for the Humanities and Health and the Department of Philosophy, will be a visiting scholar (VSRC) at Princeton University from February 2012. He will be working with Professor Michael Smith on issues such as moral responsibility, weakness of the will, compulsion, and mental disorder.
Congratulations Stefan!
KCL at the London Graduate Conference
November 2011
The Department of Philosophy at King's will be represented by two PhD research students at the upcoming London Graduate conference on 09 December 2011. This termly event is an opportunity for MPhilStud and PhD students from across the London colleges to present papers to one another, and staff from each of the institutions.
Peter Sutton will present a paper on 'Separating Ignorance from Vagueness', while John Wright will comment on a paper in the area of Political Philosophy.
For more information about the conference, please visit the Institute of Philosophy's Graduate seminars webpage.
Book launch for Department of Philosophy alumnus
November 2011
Ben Jeffery, an alumni of King’s Philosophy undergraduate programme, has written a new book entitled Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebcq and Depressive Realism. Beginning with Michel Houellebecq (author of Atomised and Platform) this book explores the concept of 'Depressive Realism' - the proposition that the facts of life are bleak and unkind - in literature and philosophy. Ranging over work by David Foster Wallace, Susan Sontag, Fredric Jameson and Margaret Atwood, Anti-Matter surveys the case for pessimism, asks how a mass culture rooted in sentimentality and trivialisation manages to produce so much cynicism and apathy, and hunts for the space that remains for serious, life-affirming art.
“A searching and eloquent consideration of one of the definitive bodies of work of our time, Anti-Matter is also a vital essay on the more general difficulties of meaning-making for contemporary novelists and/or human beings.”
Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision, and co-editor of n+1 magazine
A launch party is being held at the King’s College London Sports and Social Club at the Strand Campus, on the 24 of November. If you would like to attend please RSVP to antimatterbook@gmail.com
Student success in King's College London Business Club Apprentice Competition
October 2011
Stella Grant, one of our third year undergraduate students, was part of the winning team at the King's College London Business Club Apprentice Competition on 28 October 2011. This was a large event with leaders form the U.K. business and charity sectors on the judging panel. Stella made a point of crediting her philosophical training after the victory!
Congratulations, Stella, on this excellent achievement!
Peter Goldie 1946-2011
October 2011
We are very sad to report that Professor Peter Goldie died of cancer on 22 October after a brief illness.
Peter Goldie was a Lecturer in this Department from 1998 to 2003 and then Reader until 2005, when he left to take up the Samuel Hall Chair at the University of Manchester. He retained a connection with our Department, and was still a Visiting Professor here at the time of his death.
Philosophy was Peter Goldie’s second career. Before training as a philosopher he spent twenty-five years in the City of London, culminating as the Chief Executive Officer of a public company listed in the FTSE 100. In 1990 he switched direction, studying for a BA at University College London, and then a BPhil and DPhil in Oxford.
He first became well-known for his monograph The Emotions 2000. On Personality followed in 2004, as well as a number of edited works in ethics, aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. Shortly before he died he sent his publishers the final typescript of his book The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion and the Mind. He was also pleased last week to see advance copies of two collections he recently jointly edited, on Empathy and on The Aesthetic Mind.
Peter had a distinctive philosophical voice and range of interests. His death is a great loss to philosophy and his many friends.
There will be a Memorial Concert in his memory on Wednesday 2 November at 6.00pm at St Stephen’s Church Westbourne Park Road London W2 5QT, followed by a reception.
Professor Lappin appointed Chair of Section of the British Academy
October 2011
This week Professor Shalom Lappin was formally elected as the new Chair of Section H4 (Linguistics and Philology) of the British Academy.
This news follows shortly after the announcement that Professor Lappin has been appointed a guest researcher in the Language and Computation Group of the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. This involves sharing research with its members and visiting the group on an occasional basis.
Many congratulations Shalom!
Philosophy Finalist wins the Jelf Medal
October 2011
The Department is pleased to announce that one of our 2010/1 finalists, Clare Field, was awarded the School of Arts & Humanities Jelf Medal, one of the College prize’s, beating off competition from students across the School.
The Medal is awarded to the student who has most distinguished him/herself both academically and by their prominence in the social or athletic activities of the College during their undergraduate career. In 1868, the Reverend Richard Jelf DD retired from the office of Principal of the College which he had held since 1844. His colleagues and friends established the Jelf Medals (one per School) to commemorate his services to the College.
Congratulations Clare!
92% satisfaction with teaching in NSS 2011
September 2011
The Department has been delighted to receive a positive review in the 2011 National Student Survey. Professor Peter Adamson, the Head of Department, commented on the results as follows:
The Department is pleased to note its recent results in the National Student Survey. We received a score of 91% in overall satisfaction for the second year running, matched by a 92% approval score endorsing the teaching on the course. The Department notes that this is an especially good result given that we were last year in the midst of making a transition from one undergraduate teaching system to a new, "modular" system. We have also received unusually high scores in some areas, notably under assessment and feedback: all our scores under "feedback" are at least 10% higher than the national average, a tribute to the success of our small group teaching system. Our most central commitment is to provide an intellectually stimulating, passionately taught course in Philosophy, and are very pleased that our students seem to feel that we are achieving this aim.
Conference in Honour of Professor Rai Gaita at Flinders
August 2011
Flinders University in Adelaide has recently held a two-day conference in honour of Professor Raimond Gaita. So as not to double up with the book of essays in his honour (see below - the contributors to that were mostly philosophers), the conference focused on his more general writings.
Papers were given by international lawyers, literary critics, social workers, political theorists, novelists, poets and playwrights.
The Nobel prize winning novelist John Coetzee launched his latest book, After Romulus
More information can be found here on the Flinders University website.
Research student success!
August 2011 update
Congratulations are due to five of our recently-completed doctoral students, each of whom have secured jobs for the coming academic year:
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NEW! Dr Michael O'Sullivan (PhD 2011) has been appointed Postdoctoral Lecturing Fellow at the University of East Anglia
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Tyron Goldschmidt (PhD 2011/2) will be taking up a postdoctoral position in January 2012 at the University of Notre Dame.
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Dr Anneli Jefferson (PhD 2010) has been appointed to a research post in the division on Ethics in the Neurosciences at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany
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Dr Siu-Fan Lee (PhD 2009) has been appointed to an Assistent Professorship in the Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University
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Dr Thomas Raleigh (PhD 2010) has been awarded a research fellowship at UNAM in Mexico City.
Raimond Gaita is Routledge's Philosopher of the Month for June
July 2011
Professor Rai Gaita has been honoured by Routledge as their 'Philosopher of the Month'. They say:
The work of Raimond Gaita – in books such as Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, A Common Humanity and The Philosopher’s Dog – has made an outstanding and controversial contribution to philosophy and to the wider culture.
This ties in with with the publication of a new book 'Philosophy, Ethics and a Common Humanity: Essays in Honour of Raimond Gaita', edited by Christopher Cordoner, in which a range of contributors (inlcuding KCL's own Professor MM McCabe) discuss various aspects of Gaita's thought.
Peter Adamson on ABC's The Philosophers Zone
June 2011
Professor Peter Adamson recently appeared on Australian ABC Radio National's Philosopher's Zone to talk about Plotinus. (11 June 2011)
He believed in the One, a fundamental principle of the universe. He believed in the Intellect and the Soul. He also thought that matter was evil. This week, the Philosopher's Zone enters the strange world of Plotinus, a great philosopher who kept the pagan flame alight at a time when the Roman empire was about to give itself up to Christianity
You can listen to the programme online via the ABC website. See other podcasts and broadcasts by our faculty by visiting the Media page.
And don't forget: Professor Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy podcast continues this week with Professor Hugh Benson on the Aristotelean Method.
Additional funds for the Sorabji Graduate studentship
June 2011
The Department has been able to increase the amount of financial support available via the Sorabji Graduate bursary from £2,000 to £10,000, with immediate effect.
Applications are currently invited for the 2011/2 competition. The Sorabji Graduate bursary is open to everybody who will be a graduate student in the Department during the coming academic year. The deadline for applications is 16.00 on 24 June 2011; full details of how to apply can be found on the Sorabji bursary information page.
Wilfried Meyer Viol and Shalom Lappin to speak at LOCI workshop - 16-17 June 2011
May 2011
Dr Wilfried Meyer-Viol and Professor Shalom Lappin are among the speakers participating in the LOCI project's workshop on 'Type Dependency, Type Theory with Records, and Natural-Language Flexibility', at Queen Mary University of London in June. The workshop will explore the formal modelling of natural language flexibility, covering lexical, syntactic and semantic aspects.
For further details please see the conference website. All are welcome; you wish to attend please contact peter.sutton@kcl.ac.uk to RSVP.
Andrea Sangiovanni to give keynote lecture in Manchester
May 2011
Dr Andrea Sangiovanni will deliver the keynote lecture at Brave New World 2011, the Fifteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), on 27-28 June 2011 at the University of Manchester. For further information, and registration, please see the conference homepage.
Charles Travis participates in conference in honour of Hilary Putnam's 85th birthday
May 2011
Professor Charles Travis has been invited to give a talk at Philosophy in an Age of Science: A Conference in Honor of Hilary Putnam's 85th Birthday, held at Harvard and Brandeis Universities between 31 May and 02 June 2011. For full details of this event, please visit the conference website.
‘Word Meaning: what it is and what it is not.’
May 2011
Congratulations are due to Professor Mark Textor and to Dr Tim Pritchard (a recently completed-PhD candidate in the Department), who have been informed that the AHRC have agreed to fund their project investigating word meaning.
The project will do what it says on the tin: explore conceptions of word meaning that have room for semantic underdetermination and other phenomena characteristic of natural language. The project will be based at King’s, and run over three years. The Principle Investigator is Mark Textor, the Co-Investigator is Dr Robyn Carston (UCL) with Dr Tim Pritchard working as a postdoctoral fellow.
Further details of the project will appear on this website in due course.
Professor Papineau to deliver the Gottlob Frege Lectures in Theoretical Philosophy in Tartu
May 2011
Professor David Papineau will be in Tartu, Estonia, for a three-day workshop from June 29 until 01 July. The title of his lecture series will be "Varieties of Naturalism", in which he will consider a number of varieties of naturalism that have become increasingly popular during philosophy’s ‘naturalist turn’ of the past fifty years, and assess their strengths and weaknesses. For further information about the series, or if you are interested in attending, you can visit their website.
International engagements for Professor Shalom Lappin in Amsterdam and Boulder
May 2011
The Dutch Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) has invited Professor Shalom Lappin to spend August-September in Amsterdam on a visiting research professorship.
This will follow Professor Lappin’s prestigious engagement at the Linguistic Institute 2011, taking place at the University of Colorado at Boulder between 07 July and 02 August, where he will co-teach, with Alexander Clark, a course entitled “Nativism, Formal Learning Theory, and Universal Grammar”.
Professor Ruth Kempson gives plenary session at Łódź
May 2011
On 12 May, Professor Kempson delivered the opening address at the Second International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics in Łódź, Poland. The title of her paper was: "Dynamic Syntax: Natural Languages as Mechanisms for Interpretation Construction".
Professor Simon May to appear at HowTheLightGetsIn 2011
May 2011
Professor Simon May (visiting Professor in the Department) will be joining a host of others at this year’s HowTheLightGetsIn Philosophy festival at Hay (26th May – 5th June) to discuss his new book 'A History of Love', explore the pursuit of happiness and weigh up our Nietzschean modernity.
The full program is now online at http://www.howthelightgetsin.org/tickets/
UNC-KCL Early Modern Philosophy conference
May 2011
The Department was represented in North Carolina by Dr John Callanan, Dr Jasper Reid, and two of our research students who gave papers: Rafael Simian-Vasquez and Jen Wright. For further details of this conference, please see the event page.
Humboldt-KCL graduate workshop announced
April 2011
The Department of Philosophy hosted the second Humboldt University Berlin-KCL graduate workshop over the first weekend of May (06-07 May 2011). See the dedicated workshop page for further information.
Professor Mark Textor
March 2011
Department of Philosophy is delighted to announce that Mark Textor has been awarded a Professorship in the Department. Wir gratulieren, Professor Textor!
Dr Elselijn Kingma appointed to Eindhoven Chair
February 2011
Elselijn Kingma, research fellow in the Philosophy of Medicine project, has been appointed ‘Extraordinary Professor in philosophy and ethics of biotechnologies from a humanist perspective’ at the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The appointment is for three years initially, and is sponsored by the Humanist Trust ‘Socrates’. Elselijn will continue to be based at King's but will be spending one week in every five at Eindhoven.
Pfizer prize for Professor Maria Rosa Antognazza
December 2010
The History of Science Society has announced that it is awarding The Pfizer Prize for Best Scholarly Book to Professor Maria Rosa Antognazza for Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography, published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. The Pfizer Award recognizes an outstanding book in the history of science and is the highest honor awarded by the HSS for a single work of scholarship.
The History of Philosophy... without any gaps!
Autumn 2010
Professor Peter Adamson
has begun a series of podcasts covering the entire history of philosophy... "without any gaps." In the first year it will cover ancient Greek philosophy up to Aristotle, beginning with the Pre-Socratics.
Professor Shalom Lappin now an FBA
Autumn 2010
The Department is delighted to announce that Professor Shalom Lappin has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Research student exchanges
Autumn 2010
Two of our graduate research students have recently benefited from our programme of supported exchanges. Michael Withey is in Cornell as a Malcolm Fellow this semester, and Leandro di Brasi has recently returned from a month at the University of North Carolina.
myScholarship award success
Summer 2010
The Department is delighted to announce that three of our students -- Vlad Cadar, Verena Fritzenwenger and Ayesha Patel -- have won a King's myScholarship award.
Dr Wilfried Meyer Viol wins award for Excellence in Teaching
Summer 2010
We are very pleased to announce that Dr Wilfried Meyer-Viol is one of the winners of the King's Awards for Excellence in Teaching for 2009-10. This year over 334 staff members were nominated for the Award, with more than 1,575 students taking part in the nominations process. We are extremely pleased that one of the awards went to a member of the Department.
Natural philosophy in the Islamic world
The Leverhulme Trust has awarded a grant to Professor Peter Adamson worth about £250K over three years for a project to study natural philosophy in the Islamic world.
Welcome Trust award for Medical Humanities
The Welcome Trust has made a £1.95 million award for 2009-14 to King's for research in the Medical Humanities, including the Philosophy of Medicine project.
Professor MM McCabe President of the BPA
Professor MM McCabe has been elected President of the British Philosophical Association.
Philosophy Bites
Peter Adamson, Rai Gaita, MM McCabe, David Papineau and Thomas Pink have all recently made contributions to the popular 'Philosophy Bites' series of podcasts. See the recent podcasts and broadcasts by members of the Department.