Philosophy PhD / MPhil

Overview

The Department of Philosophy at Liverpool has a long history of combining research excellence in core areas of philosophy with innovative work at the frontiers of the discipline: from politics to spirituality, Chinese philosophy to speculative futures, neo-Platonism to feminism. We value plurality, innovation and creativity. For us, philosophy is a set of approaches and methods that can help us to make sense of whatever is puzzling, perplexing or interesting in the world around us. Our thriving community of postgraduate researchers both benefits greatly from our research environment and makes an important active contribution to it.

While we value our pluralism, we also seek opportunities to work together. Four research groups support our research. These focus our programme of visiting speakers, workshops, reading groups and postgraduate activities, and help to foster connections with interdisciplinary research centres and global networks of scholars.

The Ethics, Law and Justice in Private and Public Life group carries forward a strong Liverpool tradition of producing world class, practical philosophy research that has real-world impact. Researchers in this group consider the network of norms and duties that public officials must navigate; legal, social, moral, religious, political and personal. They seek to understand normative principles about how social goods like income, wealth, and education should be distributed, and examine principles of neutrality across differing conceptions of the good (such as are contained in different religious creeds).

Members of the Language and Experience in 20th Century Philosophy group work on philosophical themes that emerge from the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy. They share an interest in connections between modern philosophy of language and pre-modern and post-Kantian thought. They have expertise on systematic and historical aspects of linguistic idealism, connections between experience, agency and language and the unity and temporality of consciousness. The group focuses on figures, such as Frege, Brentano, Russell, and Wittgenstein, as well as later thinkers such as the members of the 'Wartime Quartet' (G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch).

Our Social Imagination Collective group starts from the provocation: What do neglected forms of social imagination add to the project of achieving a better social world? This group explores the role of imagination, empathy, embodiment, aesthetics and art in helping us to better the world and understand one another. The group combines non-ideal epistemology, , philosophy of art and aesthetics, work on emotion in philosophy of science, and philosophical analyses of empathy. They have pioneered new methodological approaches, such as our philosophy-in-residence programmes at cultural institutions, and often work with colleagues across disciplines, as well as museums in Liverpool.

Work by researchers in our Speculative Futures: Mind, Meaning, and the Human Condition group addresses the foundational question: what gives life meaning? Rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence, bioengineering and environmental conditions all suggest that what counts as a meaningful life  must be reinvestigated. They work in the philosophy of mind, meaning, life and death, and environmental philosophy across various philosophical traditions. They investigate what developments in science and technology can tell us about cognition and subjective experience, and, more generally, what it means to have a mind. The group works closely with the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures.

Staff in the department have senior roles in philosophical societies, on steering committees and journal editorial boards. Sorin Baiasu is Co-editor in Chief of the journal Public Reason and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Kantian Standing Group of the European Consortium for Political Research. He is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Uehiro Institute, Oxford University and a Member of the Digitales Kant-Zentrum NRW and the Advisory Board of the UK Kant Society. Katherine Furman is on the board of the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology and Society and the steering committee for the European PPE network. Professor Simon Hailwood is on the editorial board of Environmental Values. Robin McKenna is on the Steering Committee of the Political Epistemology Network. Professor Thomas Schramme is co-editor in chief of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Vid Simoniti is on the board of the British Society of Aesthetics. Rachael Wiseman is associate editor for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and is on the management committee of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.

Our work involves collaboration with colleagues in a wide variety of national and international universities and partner organisations. We regularly host visiting researchers from outside the UK. We work closely with many partners in the city: for example, Tate Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool, Open Eye, NHS North-West, FACT.

Training and research support

As a postgraduate researcher you will belong to one of our four department research groups, through which you will participate in a variety of research activities, from reading groups to exhibitions to conferences. Thursday afternoons are our department research afternoons, in which all postgraduates and faculty come together for Insights workshops with visiting speakers, the Stapledon Colloquium and our Work in Progress seminars. Our postgraduates also attend bespoke research and professional skills training covering, for example, academic publishing, grant applications, archival research, presentation skills, and applying for academic posts. In your second year, you can apply for a (paid) Graduate Teaching Assistant role, which comes with training and experience in undergraduate teaching, syllabus design, assessment and marking.

Additionally, the School of the Arts runs an ambitious postgraduate training programme, dedicated to equipping postgraduate researchers with skills for careers inside and beyond academia. The School delivers an In Focus workshop series, designed specifically for arts and humanities postgraduates. Our PhD students have access to School of Arts funding for conference presentations and for organising their own workshops and events.