Registration for the first Heritage in War conference, Cultural Heritage and the Ethics of War, is now open!

The conference takes place in Cambridge, 18-19 September 2019. Its aim is to begin to develop a robust account of the status of heritage in war by exploring philosophical work on such matters as incommensurability and incomparability, the nature and status of cultural heritage, risk imposition, and the reconstruction and replacement of damaged or destroyed heritage.

More information about the conference can be found here, and you can register for the conference here.

Professor Sophie-Grace Chappell has written a blog post for the scholarly blog The Junkyard, on How to be somebody else: imaginative identification and the limits of ethics. The post is the first part of three. You can find it here.

Heritage in War is an AHRC-funded project, co-directed by Derek Matravers and Helen Frowe, combining aesthetics, value theory and the ethics of war.

The project has recently announced its first call for abstracts, for an upcoming interdisciplinary conference at Loyola University, New Orleans, in March 2020.

Professor Sophie-Grace Chappell has written a retrospective on Alan Turing for LGBT History Month, available here.

LGBT History Month takes place in February each year, focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, aiming to promote equality and diversity and increasing the visibility of the LGBT community.

Heritage in War is an AHRC-funded project, co-directed by Derek Matravers and Helen Frowe, combining aesthetics, value theory and the ethics of war. The project’s blog now has its first two posts!

• “The challenges of protecting cultural heritage in armed conflict”, by Emma Cunliffe, Paul Fox and Peter Stone.
• “Saving lives or saving stones? Two sides of the same coin?”, by Erich Hatala Matthes.

You can find out more about the project here.

Our very own Jon Pike and Sean Cordell have published an article in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy arguing that Lance Armstrong was a cheat. The article critically discusses the opposing view that, roughly, “it’s not cheating if everybody’s doing it”.

The article can be found here.

John Shand has recently published a controversial piece, in Philosophy Now, on assisted dying:  Putting Animals and Humans to Sleep. More on John can be found here.

Chris Yorke successfully defended his PhD, ‘Bernard Suits’ Utopia of Gameplay: A Critical Analysis’ in front of a formidable examination committee. From the left there is Jon Pike (supervisor), Chris, Professor Mike McNamee (Swansea), and Professor Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open University). Congratulations to Chris, and we look forward to seeing more of it in print!

The Department spent the 18th and 19th of October, in the inspiring surroundings of Chicheley Hall, reading and discussing research papers.

David Johnson, who did his MA with us, has received funding to do his PhD at the Royal College of Art. He will be working on his dissertation, ‘Blind Aesthetics-Memory, Materiality and the Tactility of the Senses’. In the project he will test the idea that blindness can provide radical new insights into our understanding of the world and that the plastic arts can be a powerful way for blind people to express these insights. David is himself blind.

Many congratulations to David!