Philosophy Research Interests

Subject Profile

Philosophy aims for excellence and innovation in its distinctive postgraduate programme. We are unique in Scotland for our specialism in Modern European Philosophy and Philosophy and the Arts. We also offer an unusual depth and breadth of postgraduate study by drawing on proven specialist knowledge across three major areas: recent continental philosophy; analytic philosophy; and the history of philosophy. We foster interdisciplinarity and encourage research bridging the traditional analytic/continental divide, or linking philosophy with literature and/or the visual arts. Regular postgraduate work-in-progress seminars provide a forum for discussion and skills development.

Philosophy regularly receives small grants to support its ongoing research and conferences, and is part of an AHRC-funded postgraduate research training network in European philosophy, which also includes the Universities of Edinburgh, Warwick and Middlesex, and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Postgraduates are offered a joint study room, use of computers, and, where appropriate, the opportunity of teaching experience.

2001 RAE Grading: 3(a)

Main Research Interests

Aesthetics/Philosophy and the Arts

• Aesthetics in 18th-20th century European philosophy (especially such figures as Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard).
• Philosophy and the Arts, with particular reference to: philosophy and the visual arts; philosophy and literature; philosophy, theory and art practice; contemporary philosophies of sensation and the affects; the imagination; interdisciplinarity; the sublime; philosophy and film.
• Siting difference: literature, the visual arts and philosophies of difference; Deleuze, Lyotard and the art of experimentation; contemporary feminist aesthetics.

Contact

Professor Nicholas Davey, Dr Rachel Jones, Dr John Mullarkey, Dr James Williams, Dr Beth Lord, Dr Johanna Oksala.

Hermeneutics

• The critical investigation of philosophical hermeneutics with particular reference to Gadamer; the question of theory; hermeneutics and the philosophy of language in Wittgenstein and Derrida; phenomenology and hermeneutics.
• Hermeneutic Thought and Aesthetic Experience: dialogical approaches to interpretation and understanding; hermeneutics as a means of overcoming the opposition between ideas and sensibility, between material aspects of art and intellectual aspects of artistic meaning.
• Reconfiguring the relation between art theory and practice; rethinking philosophy as practice: the challenge of writing.

Contact

Professor Nicholas Davey, Dr Rachel Jones, Dr John Mullarkey, Dr James Williams, Dr Beth Lord, Dr Johanna Oksala.

European Philosophy (Modern and Contemporary)

• Kant and post-Kantian European philosophy, including Nietzsche; phenomenology; postmodern and post-structuralist thought.
• Modern French, German and Italian thought.
• Interpretations/appropriations of Nietzsche in recent French philosophy.
• Contemporary receptions of modern continental philosophy: the role of such thinkers as Badiou, Bergson, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Henry, Irigaray, and Lyotard in the re-thinking of representation, matter, subjectivity, the body, sensations, the effects, time, and power.
• Feminist philosophy in the continental tradition, with particular reference to the deconstruction and/or reconfiguration of the sexed subject.
• Comparative Continental and Anglo-American Philosophy; metaphysics and naturalism.

Contact

Professor Nicholas Davey, Dr Rachel Jones, Dr John Mullarkey, Dr James Williams, Dr Beth Lord, Dr Johanna Oksala.

History of Philosophy

• Key figures in Modern Philosophy (including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein).
• Contemporary interpretations of the history of philosophy (e.g. Deleuze on Spinoza and Hume; Henry on Descartes; feminist critiques of the history of philosophy).

Contact

Professor Nicholas Davey, Dr Rachel Jones, Dr John Mullarkey, Dr James Williams, Mr Roger Young, Dr Beth Lord, Dr Johanna Oksala.

Sources of Funding

AHRC, Discovery Scholarship (International Students).

Key Staff

Philosophy Programme Convenor

Beth Lord, PhD

Postgraduate Adviser

Dr John Mullarkey
Tel: 01382 384 517 (within the UK)
Tel: +44 1382 384 517
Fax: 01382 388 274 (within the UK)
Fax: +44 1382 388 274
Email: j.mullarkey@dundee.ac.uk
Website: Visit the prospective postgraduate page on the Philosophy website