Current Research Students

Ranier Abengana

Topic: The Future of Work and the Crisis of Critique: Resistance as a Condition of Possibility

Supervisor: Professor Brian O'Connor

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Kelly Louise Rexzy Agra

Topic: Epistemic Injustice & Philosophy

Supervisor: Professor Maeve Cooke

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Natalia Burakowska

Topic: The Phenomenology of Dementia: An Embodied-Cognitive Account

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

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August Buholzer

Topic: Kant's Theory of Representation

Supervisor: Professor Jim O'Shea

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Gent Cakaj

Topic: The Final End of Pure Reason: On the Religious Implications of Kant’s Critical Philosophy

Supervisor: Professor Jim O'Shea

Álvaro Campillo Bo

Topic: The Latin Legacy of Proclus' Commentary on Euclid

Supervisor: Associate Professor Dragos Calma

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Maria Agnese Casellato

Topic: Linguistic Reference: Descriptive, Externalism and a Middle Course

Supervisor: Professor Maria Baghramian

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Natalija Cera

Topic: Understanding Belonging in the Condition of Migration

My research explores the experiences of belonging in the context of migration. How does one experience oneself both as a migrant and as (not)belonging? Using contemporary critical philosophical research methods, such as critical phenomenology and hermeneutics, my project examines the neglected question: What implicit assumptions about belonging are built into our regular understanding of the term ‘migrant’? I hypothesise that a negative idea of belonging constitutes our conventional understanding of what it means to be in ‘migration’ – an in-between state of not fully belonging anywhere. If my hypothesis is true, it means that the term ‘migrant’ is not a value-neutral description of someone’s situation in life. It carries complex socially constructed normative content with respect to what (and who) counts as fit for belonging and what ways of belonging are acceptable (and available). Considering the urgent relevance of migration to global co

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Lisa Foran

Antonio Pio De Mattia

Topic: Unveiling Truth and Co-responsibility in Discourse: A Critical Examination of Habermas-Apel's Transcendental-Pragmatic Method

This research critically scrutinises the seminal contributions of Jürgen Habermas to the articulation of a communicative form of philosophical discourse. Emphasising the confutative nature of this method, the study meticulously explores its nuanced role in evaluating truth and normative rightness within diverse contextual frameworks of justification and signification. At the core of this approach lies the intricate interplay of dialogical and dialectical processes, encompassing the discursive practices of 'giving and asking for reasons' The examination delves into potential lacunae within Habermas's formal-pragmatic paradigm, particularly in his endeavours to grapple with the intricate issue of Truth through a pragmatic understanding of meaning and a consensual-discursive stance.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Lucas Dijker

Topic: The Authority of Knowledge: How to Reconcile Expertise with Democracy?

We are increasingly relying on scientific experts within democratic decision-making procedures. However, worries exist about whether depending on experts will empower an unelected elite, circumventing democratic accountability and stifling the voice of citizens — in essence, leading to the emergence of a technocracy. Another challenge comes from populist actors who reject experts and argue that a mystified and homogeneous “common will” should dictate all public decisions. Nevertheless, despite these concerns of empowering or rejecting experts, we need expert knowledge to make good public policies. So, how should experts be incorporated into democratic decision-making?

Supervisor: Professor Maria Baghramian

Armando D'Ippolito

Topic: Plato’s Doctrine of Light: Between Mythos and Episteme

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Tim Crowley

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Marta Dmuchowska

Topic: Why Recover C. B. Martin's Two-Sided Account of Properties?

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Tatjana von Solodkoff

Andrew Doyle

Topic: On the Being of the Philosophical Lecture

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Lisa Foran

Max K Feenan

Topic: Moments in Time: Geschichte and Geschichtlichkeit in the Thought of Friedrich Schelling and of Martin Heidegger

Max K. Feenan’s research proposes an investigation of the conceptualization of History (Geschichte) and Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit, literally 'historicalness') as theorised by the thinkers; Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), both of whom - in different ways at different times - attempted to 'recreate' philosophy itself so that it be a science (Wissenschaft, scientia) capable of articulating our living reality. In so doing, both interwove a conceptual theory of temporality (Zeitlichkeit) with that of lived-empirical theory of history. Feenan’s interpretation of these Schelling and Heidegger’s work, their contexts, ambiguities, and even paradoxes, then proceeds to consider one philosophical question of universal significance; ‘what is history itself’?

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Grace Feeney

Topic: Ethics & Embodiment as Mutually Constitutive Structures of Existence: Bringing Tradition of Continental Phenomenology nto Dialogue with Contemporary Feminist Theories in Order to Give Voice to its Inherent Gendered Implications

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Lisa Foran

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Samuel Ferns

Topic: Freedom, Knowledge & Power: Reflexive Stage in the Grammars of Critical Social Theory

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

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Evie Filea

Topic: The Phenomenological Implications & Influences of Edward Bond’s Theory of Theatre

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Lisa Foran

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Alessandro Guardascione

Topic: Values & Selfhood in Psychopathology: A Phenomenological Account

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

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David Haack

Topic: Phenomenology of Temperature

Supervisor: Associate Professor Tim Mooney

Jo-El James

Topic: Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Hyperobjects Education for Generations Witnessing the Aftermath of the Anthropocene

Supervisors: Associate Professor Tim Mooney & Assistant Professor Åine Mahon

Miho Kaneko

Topic: Can a Kind Essentialist Account of Instantiation Explain the Authorial Creation of Fictional Characters?

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Tatjana von Solodkoff

Denise Kelly

Topic: On Being (an Outsider): A Phenomenological Exploration of Social Phobia and Agoraphobia

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

Haikyung Kwon

Topic: Negative Dialectic as a Model for ‘Concrete Thinking’ – Adorno’s Formal Dialectic in Relation to Hegel

The aim of my thesis is to comparatively analyse T. W. Adorno and G. W. F. Hegel’s conceptions of the individual self and to offer a complementary reading of their ideas. The two axes of my discussion of the individual self in Adorno and Hegel are freedom and mediation. My argument consists of three steps. First of all, I establish that Adorno and Hegel, in critical response to Immanuel Kant’s account of the divided self, conceive of the individual self through mediation. Adorno subscribes to the Hegelian structure, in which the self is a mediation of thinking and being, individual and society. Second of all, I compare Adorno and Hegel’s diverging responses to Kant’s conception of individual freedom, and show how this is related to the problem of mediation. Against Kant who places freedom on the other side of the real world (noumena), Hegel formulates the logical structure of freedom as “being at home with itself” [Beisichsein] in the world.

Supervisor: Professor Brian O'Connor

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Thomas Lewis

Topic: The Eternal Return and the Philosophy of the Future: Reading Nietzsche after Auschwitz with Sarah Kofmann

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Leung Yik Long

Topic: From Suffering to Critique: Negative Dialectics 2022

Supervisor: Professor Brian O'Connor

Pepa Mellema

Topic: The Semantics & Pragmatics of Pejoratives

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Elmar Unnsteinsson

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Nathan Mulder

Topic: The Screen Specter: Phenomenology, Image Consciousness, and the Digital Screen

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Aisling Phipps

Topic: Who am I? A Phenomenology of Identity Disturbance in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Ruth Boeker

Roxane Pret Théodore

Topic: Rethinking Political Organisation from a Feminist Standpoint Politicizing an Ethics of Care and Vulnerability

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

Rachel Russell

Topic: Timelessness: Metaphysics & Perception in a Timeless World

Recent developments in modern physics have led some theoretical physicists and philosophers of time to seriously consider the possibility that our world is fundamentally timeless – that in reality, there are no moments of time, no change, and nothing happens before or after anything else. Through my research, I aim to (1) provide a framework through which to judge whether proposed ‘timeless’ theories are timeless in any meaningful way, and (2) to determine the most pragmatically favourable standpoint to adopt were one to accept a timeless theory that proposes genuine timelessness.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Dan Deasy

Clémence Saintemarie

Topic: The Aesthetic is Political: A Critical Phenomenology of Social In/Visibility: Perception, Representation, the Imaginary

Supervisor: Professor Maeve Cooke

Petros Satrazanis

Topic: Analysis of Kostas Axelos on the Planetary thought as a Path to Metaphilosophy

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Fanqi Sun

Topic: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Life

My research is an exploration of Nietzsche’s perspectives on life, aiming to demonstrate how his philosophy forms the basis for an affirmative understanding of human flourishing and serves as a response to nihilism. To achieve this objective, I have selected three distinct dimensions of life—morality, art, and play—which I argue correspond to the camel, the lion, and the child states in Nietzsche’s philosophy as articulated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I contend that these three concepts can constitute a comprehensive and cohesive framework for interpreting Nietzsche’s philosophy of life. While these three states do not exist concurrently or in parallel within Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, there is discernible continuity among them.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

Matthew Vanderkwaak

Topic: Polytheis & the Liber de Causis

Supervisor: Associate Professor Dragos Calma

Giuseppe Vitale

Topic: Aliquid Amplius. Berthold of Moosburg's Neoplatonism as Going Beyond Metaphysics

Supervisor: Associate Professor Dragos Calma

Philipp Wagenhals

Topic: Critique and Experimentalism: Philosophy and Social Criticism after Adorno and Dewey

Supervisor: Profesor Maeve Cooke

Danqi Wang

Topic: The Non-Persistence and Re-Instantiation of Persons: Fission and the Transient Selves

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Ruth Boeker

Grace Webber

Topic: Sexistentialism: A Radical Theory of Sexual Politics

Supervisor: Professor Katherine O'Donnell

Jonathan Wren

Topic: The Political Implications of Freedom & Sharing: From Heidegger to Arendt & Nancy

Supervisor: Assistant Professor Danielle Petherbridge

Shengwei Xu

Topic: Adorno and Sartre on Freedom and Praxis: A Study of Transcendence and Revolution

Supervisor: Associate Professor Joseph Cohen