News in Brief - December 2024
Featured News
Tom Whyman in The Conversation: The Case for Lying to Kids about Santa
Michael Hauskeller for BBC Bitesize: Three philosophy nuggets to help you in the New Year
International News
Vid Simoniti was at Capc musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux, France, to participate in a two-day workshop on ‘Systems, control and emancipation’, where he was one of the invited speakers.
Publications
Katherine Furman has a co-authored chapter with Maya Goldenberg on ‘Disagreement and Public Health’ in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement.
2024 Review
We kicked off the year with a book launch at Open Eye for Vid Simoniti’s Artists Remake the World. Vid’s book, along with Robin McKenna’s Non-Ideal Epistemology were the University’s books of the month. In January we welcomed two international scholars: Professor Yanhua Wang, Honorary Visiting Scholar from Sichuan Normal University, and Chiara Pellegrini, visiting PhD researcher from University of Padua:
February saw the launch of the AHRC-funded ‘Contemporary Art and Political Change for Ukrainian Displaced Persons’, a collaboration between the Ukrainian Pavillion, Vid Simoniti and Open Eye Gallery, investigating political self-expression of displaced persons through art. The project kicked off with an Artist talk by Andrii Dostliev. Dr Yiota Vassilopoulou was selected for a Faculty Learning & Teaching and Student Experience Award for work she undertook as SOTA PGR Director. Her project – submitted with PGR deputy Sarah Thomas from Comms & Media – was titled: “From Research to Education: Transforming SOTA PGR Programmes”.
In the spring we hosted two conferences. The Mind, Brain, & Consciousness: Conference for Barry Dainton's 65th Birthday and the BSHP Annual Conference.
Over the summer, we hosted the 6th International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life. Robin McKenna was a keynote at the Joint Session in a symposium on political epistemology. Rachael Wiseman appeared on In Our Time to discuss Philippa Foot
The summer saw success for many of our students. We said goodbye to the class of 2024. PhD researcher Liam Shore received a grant worth £14,000 from INNOVATE UK’s Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme, to work on a project designed to secure quantum federated learning for NISQ devices using genomics datasets. Stella Sideli was named one of FACT’s new Resident Curators and former PhD student Jack Symes was named as a BBC New Generation Thinker. Liverpool graduate Georgie Brighouse was awarded prestigious John Lennon Memorial Scholarship. PhD researcher Neil Williams was captain of the Liverpool team on University Challenge.
The academic year kicked off with a leap up the Guardian League tables. In October, Katherine Furman was in IAI explaining why Mistrust of science isn’t always irrational. Last month Katherine was awarded a CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) Diaspora fellowship to visit the University of Free State in South Africa in 2025. We’ve hosted a fantastic set of speakers at our Stapledon Colloquium: Nancy Cartwright, Alex Gregory, Jorges Dias, Mark Textor and Nikk Effingham – thank you to our brilliant postgraduates for chairing the attendant Insights seminars.
Congratulations to those who’ve been promoted this year: Vid Simoniti, Robin McKenna, Laura Gow and Katherine Furman to Senior Lecturer and Rachael Wiseman to Reader. And, finally, well done to those former PhD students who passed their vivas this year: Harry Drummond, Sam Cooper, Tom Brown, and Lauren Stephens.