News in Brief - March 2020!
This has been a strange month for all of us. It is hard to believe that March started with the UCU strikes. We had planned for this month, among other things, a Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture, a workshop on Sufficientarianism, and the Philosophy Student Showcase. Over the last few weeks we have worked incredibly hard, and our students have shown remarkable resilience and patience, as we all try to work out the new normal. It is hard to know how things will look from the end of April, but we hope we will still be able to share our achievements and plans.
Featured News
We are doing our best to issue advice to students in a changing landscape. Michael Hauskeller sent out early words of encouragement and Nikos Gkogkas has been providing Online Survial Tips for staff and students.
MA student Craig Blackwell interviewed returning student Jack Symes to discuss his PhD research, and the importance of public-facing philosophy. Jack is best known for his work on The Panpsycast, a weekly philosophy podcast for students, teachers, and the wider public. The show has over 70,000 subscribers making it one of the most popular higher education podcasts worldwide
Dr Lizzy Ventham will join us in August for a 3-year post-doc on Prof Schramme's AHRC-project, 'How does it feel?'. Lizzy works on normativity, the philosophy of mental health, moral psychology, normative ethics, desire & wellbeing. You can follow her on twitter @LizardVentham.
Other News
Rachael Wiseman’s Notes from a Biscuit Tin (funded by BSA) had its March meeting in Idaho, USA, with poet Diane Raptosh, musician Scott Knickerbocker and philosopher Greg McElwain on the theme of ‘Holism’. The tin is now in Tokyo. You can follow its progress via Instagram.
PhD student Jack Symes was invited to speak to undergraduates at the University of Nottingham about the importance of public facing philosophy (‘Low Floors, High Ceilings: The Power of Intuition Pumps’). He also presented his PhD research at Keele University’s AHRC philosophy conference (‘Developing the Evil-God Challenge: how would an evil-god act?’), and gave a talk on the successes of The Panpsycast at the OCR National Conference for Religious Studies (‘The Panpsycast: How to Teach Philosophy’). Jack also announced The Panpsycast’s partnership with the University of Birmingham’s ‘Global Philosophy of Religion’ project.
Publications
Michael Hauskeller, ‘Hans Jonas, Transhumanism, and What it Means to be Human’ is out in Revenue philosophique de Louvain.
Can We Believe in People? Stephen Clark's new book explores Human Significance in an Interconnected Cosmos.