Peter Worley

Peter Worley read philosophy at UCL (BA, 2000) and then Birkbeck (MA, 2004). He is the co-founder and CEO of The Philosophy Foundation, an award-winning charity that brings philosophy into primary and secondary education and that promote philosophy’s role in education. He is also the president of SOPHIA: the European Foundation for the Advancement of Doing Philosophy with Children, and a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.

Research interests

• Philosophical conversations
• Plato
• Socrates
• Education and dialectic.

Peter is interested in practical applications of strategies and techniques for doing philosophy with groups of people especially children and is, therefore, interested in philosophical method. 

Expertise and public engagement

Peter is an educator, writer and practitioner of philosophy in schools, both primary and secondary, and he has spoken or taught about this for:

BBC Radio 4 The Today Programme

BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves

The Sunday Times Festival of Education

LSE Roundtable on Philosophy For Children

Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture, St. Mary’s University 

Literary festivals including Oxford, Hay-on-Wye, Cheltenham, Abu Dahbi, 

How The Light Gets In Festival, Hay-on-Wye

Invited speaker at ‘Patterns of Thought’ conference, Liverpool University

Invited speaker at ‘Intellectual Virtues’ conference, Edinburgh University

Keynote speaker for PSS (philosophy in schools with students) conference at Leeds University (2015): http://arts.leeds.ac.uk/pssconference/programme/ 

Selected publications

'Open thinking, closed questioning: two kinds of open and closed question' in The Journal of Philosophy in Schools Vol 2, No 2 (2015)

'Ariadne’s Clew: absence and presence in the facilitation of philosophical conversations' in The Journal of Philosophy in Schools Vol 3, No 2 (Dec 2016)

‘The philosophy in philosophy in schools’ in Think

‘The Virtues of Thinking’ in Discourse

‘If it, anchor it, open it up’ in The Socratic Handbook

‘Class Act’ in The Philosophers’ Magazine

The If Machine (Bloomsbury, 2011)

The If Odyssey (Bloomsbury, 2012) Bronze award winner, Primary Teacher Update, nominated for Best Educational Book 2013

Once Upon an If (Bloomsbury, 2014) Bronze award winner, Primary Teacher Update, nominated for Best Educational Book 2014

Editor and co-author: The Philosophy Shop (Crown House) Best Philosophy Book 2012, Foreword Review Awards; Best Anthology, New England Book Festival; Best Educational Book 2013, Educational Resources Award

Co-author: Thoughtings (Best Teaching Book, Teach Primary Magazine 2014)

General editor: The Philosophy Foundation Series including Provocationsand The Numberverse