One of the largest Philosophy departments in the UK
We combine comprehensive coverage of the discipline with unique areas of specialisation in the history of philosophy; in metaphysics, the philosophy of action, mind and psychology and particularly at the intersection of these disciplines; in the philosophy of medicine; in formal philosophy; and in legal and political philosophy.
We have been ranked 6th in the UK in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) Power Rankings and 1st in the country for Research Environment and Support. 86 per cent of our research was valued as being ‘world leading’ (4*) or ‘internationally excellent’ (3*).
We have been ranked in the top ten departments worldwide for four consecutive years in the QS World University Rankings.
Our research excellence is demonstrated and supported by success in securing research grants and donations from both public and private bodies. These include a £1.4 million donation from the Sowerby Foundation to fund the Chair in Philosophy and Medicine and recent grants of more than £3 million to support projects on topics from metacognition to EU solidarity, from the status of animals in Islamic Philosophy to the role of bots in online networks.
The research life of the department of Philosophy involves a wide range of term-time activities, these can be divided into three categories: research seminars, cluster activities, and invited speaker events.
Research seminars
Every week the graduate research community and the faculty have their own work in progress seminars in which work is presented for about 45 minutes followed by a discussion of equal length. These activities serve to bring the community together and underscore the vibrancy of the department as a place of research, work-sharing, and collective academic enterprise.
The staff seminar has recently featured: Dr Stephen Harrop on Kant and the Scots; Dr Adrian Alsmith on Body Ownership and Response Dependence; Dr Sam Kimpton Nye on Necessity’s Default Status; Professor Clare Carlisle on …
The department also has an MPhil Proseminar and MA Proseminar in which colleagues discuss papers from philosophy with our first year graduate research students and MA students respectively.
We also have a weekly graduate research seminar that’s mandatory for those on the MPhilStud degree, but is open to the research community more generally. In the past few years, this has included: Professor Mark Textor on Lotze’s Philosophy of Mind; Professor Eliot Michaelson and Dr Lucy McDonald on Promising and Consenting; Professor Sue James and Dr John Callanan on Themes from Cavendish; Dr Jess Leech on Higher Order Metaphysics; Professor Andrea Sangiovanni on The Value of Solidarity; Professor David Papineau on Thoughts and Things; Dr Zita Toth on The Problem of Change in the (mostly) Medieval Aristotelian Tradition …
The Department also has a broad variety of reading groups organised under the auspices of our research clusters.
Each year the department hosts the Peace lecture, the Mark Sainsbury lecture and regular invited speakers, more details can usually be found on our Events page.