Dr Coffee awarded funding for Bridging the Gender Gap through Time

Dr Alan Coffee awarded funding for workshops on Bridging the Gender Gap through Time

Dr Alan Coffee has been awarded a Newton Mobility Grant, alongside Dr Sandrine Bergès from Bilkent University in Turkey. The funding will support two workshops – one at King’s College London and one at Bilkent University – on bridging the gender gap through time: how women philosophers of the past contributed to today’s thought. There will also be a masterclass session associated with each workshop aimed postgraduate students wanting to learn how to publish on historical women thinkers.

The gender gap that exists throughout the world extends to academic philosophy in at least two ways: first, women philosophers of the past are not given their due prominence in the history of the discipline. Secondly, female students in philosophy rarely achieve the same degree of success as their male counterparts.

Based on the plausible hypothesis that the lack of visible women role models in the history of the discipline contributes to women students’ propensity to abandon their philosophical aspiration despite being as competent as their male colleagues, Dr Coffee and Dr Bergès propose a programme of reinsertion of women in the history of philosophy that is both pedagogical and research based.

The project is built around two research conferences based, on the work of several women philosophers including Mary Wollstonecraft and writers from revolutionary France, and accompanying masterclasses on writing, publishing and teaching. Amongst the final outputs there will be an edited and comprehensive scholarly volume on The Wollstonecraftian Mind.

Awarded by the Royal Society, Newton Mobility Grants provide international researchers with funding to explore opportunities for building lasting networks or for bilateral visits to strengthen emerging collaborations.

Of his recent award, Dr Coffee said: 'We really are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring together researchers working women’s contribution to philosophy from across the globe. It’s an exciting time to be working on this subject and it is long overdue. It is not that women made a minor contribution to philosophy that had previously been neglected. It is becoming clear that the discipline as we think of it is being genuinely redefined by their work.'