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Professor Nicholas Davey

Nicholas Davey
Nicholas
Davey

Contact Details

E-Mail: j.r.n.davey@dundee.ac.uk
Telephone: (01382) 385199
Room Location: 4.1, Tower Extension

Biography

Professor Nicholas Davey received his B.A. in History and Philosophy at the University of York, and both his M.A. and D. Phil in the History of Ideas at the University of Sussex. He also studied at the University of Tubingen. At York he studied with the Medieval historian Gordon Leff, at Sussex with the Intellectual Historian John Burroughs and at Tübingen with the philosopher Klaus Hartmann.

Professor Davey served as lecturer at the City University of London where he worked closely with the Dilthey translator Peter Rickman, as lecturer at Manchester University, as Senior Lecturer and Reader at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff and as Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at the University of Dundee where he continues to work teaching and researching in Philosophy.

He is currently writing a book entitled Humanities in Question which looks at the Humanities from the perspective of hermeneutics and focuses on the processes of inter-action between humanities disciplines and the social and cultural significance of the productive spaces they generate. 

Research

Nicholas Davey’s overlapping areas of philosophical research involve the philosophical development of contemporary hermeneutics (the works of Gadamer, Vattimo and Iser), contemporary European aesthetics ( the nature of meaning and interpretation in the arts), the philosophy of Nietzsche ( the connections between philology, language and interpretation in his writings) and aspects of Buddhist Thought and Hermeneutics. Since 1989, he has been associated with the International Hermeneutics Seminar originally under the direction of Hans-Georg Gadamer firstly at the University of Heidelberg and then at the University of Freiburg. At the University of Dundee he established the Theoros and Hermeneutica Scotia research groups which meet annually. Nicholas Davey also established the Arts and Humanities Research Institute at the University of Dundee.

Teaching

Nicholas Davey’s teaches a variety of graduate and post-graduate courses on hermeneutics, aesthetics, Hegel and Gadamer. He has a particular interest in inter-disciplinary teaching and counts three of his major achievements as the building of the B.A. scheme in Art and Aesthetics atCardiff, the joint Art and Philosophy M.A. in Dundee and establishing theSchoolofHumanitiesand its Arts and Humanities Research Institute within theUniversityofDundee. His current Honours modules are “Understanding. Dialogue and Interpretation” and “The Question of Vision in Art and Philosophy”.

Post-graduate Supervision

Nicholas Davey has successfully supervised M.Phil and Ph.D theses on Aesthetics and Art Education, Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics, Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Barthes and Photography, Charles Taylor and Secularism. He is currently supervising work on Vattimo and would welcome research proposals in Aesthetics, Hermeneutics and both modern and contemporary European Thought.

National and International Activities

Professor Davey has served as:

Selected Publications

Nicholas Davey has over a hundred published items concerning hermeneutics, aesthetics and Modern European Philosophy.Cover of Unquiet Understanding

Books and Chapters

Refereed Journal Papers        

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