Research

The Philosophy department offers research supervision to PhD and research MLitt students across a wide range of areas, reflecting the research interests of our staff. All research students are assigned a supervisor; joint supervision may be suitable in some cases. We also offer a PhD by Distance Learning which is suitable for students who cannot come to campus regularly. A regular Departmental Research Seminar also hosts visiting speakers and members of the department presenting work in progress.

We are interested in hearing from students wishing to undertake postgraduate level work in Philosophy at the MLitt or doctoral level. Please contact one of the supervisors below if you are thinking about applying for a PhD in their subject area.  

Professor Michael Beaney: Supervision is offered in the history of analytic philosophy, particularly the thought of Frege, Wittgenstein, Stebbing, and Collingwood. He also has interests in creativity, historiography, and Chinese philosophy of language and logic. 

Professor Vikki Entwistle: Supervision is offered in ethics, philosophy of medicine and interdisciplinary projects in philosophy and public health. Professor Entwhistle is an interdisciplinary scholar combining philosophy with social research to understand and address challenges in public health and healthcare provision in relation to human well being and social justice. 

Dr Gerry Hough: Supervision is offered in philosophy of language, including opaque contexts, substitutivity, and the semantics of belief reports.  

Professor Jesper Kallestrup:  Supervision is offered in epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophical methodology. Recent research interests include topics in social epistemology such as testimony, trust and group knowledge, and the metaphysics of mind and knowledge such as extended knowledge and cognitive integration.

Professor Beth Lord: Supervision is offered in History of Philosophy. Dr Lord's research focuses on Spinoza and Kant, with particular emphasis on themes in Spinoza’s metaphysics and political philosophy. Supervision is also offered in subjects relating to 18th-21st century continental philosophy, including continental interpretations of historical texts and interdisciplinary projects.

Dr Federico Luzzi: Supervision is offered in epistemology broadly construed--with particular emphasis on knowledge from non-knowledge--epistemic injustice, and gender equality in sports.

Dr Luca Moretti: Supervision is offered in epistemology, including the epistemology of perception broadly construed (basic knowledge, disjunctivism, immediate justification, cognitive penetrability, hinge epistemology), the epistemology of inference (transmission and failure of transmission of justification, closure and counter-closure), the epistemology of testimony, the epistemology of education, and Bayesian epistemology and its application to scepticism.

Dr Ulrich Stegmann: Supervision is offered in general philosophy of science (e.g. models, visual representations, causation, explanation, experimentation) and the history and philosophy of the life sciences (including neuroscience and biomedicine).

Dr Paula Sweeney: Supervision is offered in philosophy of language, including relativism, contextualism, vagueness, and their connections with indexicality.  

Dr Stephan Torre: Supervision is offered in the metaphysics of time, tense, self-locating content, modality, and persistence through time.  

Some current (and graduated) students and their projects from the University of Aberdeen include:

• Casper Storm Hansen, Constructivism without Verificationism
• Giacomo Melis, The Epistemic Defeat of A Priori and Empirical Certainties: A Comparison
• Balint Kekedi, Descartes, the Sheep, and the Wolf: A Study in the Autonomy of Cartesian Automata
• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, Spinoza and shared decision-making: From the theory of collective action to patient participation policy in mental health services
• Matthew Angevin, Thinking emancipation through autonomy with Spinoza and Simondon
• Kevin Merrick Olivier, Virtue Epistemology and Knowledge from Non-Knowledge: An investigation into whether knowledge may be inferred from non-knowledge within the various virtue epistemic frameworks
• Jonah Haddad, Wagering on Knowledge: Epistemic Limitations and Possible Uses of Wager Arguments in Knowing Reality
• Peter Hartl, The taming of religion: Hume's sceptical theism and his criticism of vulgar religion in context
• Andreas Fjellstad, Transparency, Transitivity or Reflexivity
• Christos Georgakakis, Cognitive Penetration of Perception and the Problem for Justification

Former student placements include:

• Federico Luzzi, Graduated 2010
  Current position: University of Aberdeen, Senior Lecturer
• Tyler Atkinson, Graduated 2013
  Current position: Bethany College-Lindsborg, Tenure-Track
• Casper Storm Hansen, Graduated 2014
  Current position: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Postdoc
• Filippo Ferrari, Graduated 2014
  Current position: University of Bonn, Fellowship/Postdoc
• Giacomo Melis, Graduated 2015
  Current position: University of Stirling, Fellowship/Postdoc

• Andreas Fjellstad, Graduated 2016

  Current position: University of Bergen, Fellowship/Postdoc

• Christopher Thomas, Graduated 2017
  Current position: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018 temporary lecturer

• Peter Hartl, Graduated 2019
  Current position: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Fellow

The Philosophy department hosts research fellowships for Polish academics, funded by the W Bednarowski Trust. The W Bednarowski Trust, based in Aberdeen, was set up in 1999 to enable Polish academics, either lecturers or postdoctoral researchers, to take up six-week research fellowships at the University of Aberdeen and other Scottish universities, so that they can use library facilities and have useful conversations with academics in Scotland. The areas of research cover the various branches of philosophy and cognate subjects, and the fellowships are open to academics in Philosophy Institutes and cognate areas. Travel, accommodation, and a weekly stipend are covered by the Trust for successful applicants. Applications are usually invited in the spring. To  see further details, go to the Bednarowski Trust website: http://www.bednarowskitrust.org/

Some helpful links for further information and resources in Philosophy include:

• Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• PhilPapers
• Scottish Philosophical Association 
• British Philosophical Association 
• British Society for the History of Philosophy
• European Society for Analytic Philosophy
• Society for European Philosophy
• American Philosophical Association 
• Australasian Philosophical Association
• Dailynous
• Philosophybites
• Philosophytalk