In April’s Philosophy Research Seminar, Dr Alfred Archer from Tilburg University came to speak to us about “Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power”.
You can listen to the talk below.
The philosophy in Frankenstein (talk in Belfast, March 28 2019)
Alex Barber gave a talk on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as part of the Belfast Imagine festival on March 28th. In it, he talked about the surprising presence within Mary Shelley’s famous and much-loved novel of her mother and father – the philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.
Wollstonecraft, who was called ‘a hyena in petticoats’ and a ‘philosophizing serpent’ (and worse) by male critics, is best known today for her revolutionary manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. She died ten days after giving birth to Mary Shelley but, as Alex explained in his talk, her ideas live on in the words of her daughter’s extraordinary novel.
Music and Philosophy conference, 11th-12th July 2019
The 7th biennial conference of the Music and Philosophy Study Group with take place in King’s College, London. The OU’s Derek Matravers is on the programme committee. The keynote speakers are:
Professor Jenefer Robinson (University of Cincinnati)
Professor Alexander García Düttmann (Universität der Künste, Berlin)
Professor Julian Johnson (Royal Holloway, University of London)
A full draft programme, and registration details, are available via the conference site.
Rory Cox (St Andrews) on Heritage in War blog
The Heritage in War blog has a new post, written by St Andrews’ Rory Cox, responding to cultural heritage destruction as a security threat.
Heritage in War is an AHRC-funded project, co-directed by Derek Matravers (OU) and Helen Frowe (Stockholm), combining aesthetics, value theory and the ethics of war.
Mark Pinder and Jon Pike at the Philosophy Research Seminar
In March’s research seminar, Mark Pinder raised some objections to recent work by Jon Pike and Sean Cordell on issues about cheating in sport, to which Jon offered some rebuttals. They were asking how one should go about defending a theory of cheating in sport. Do you have to analyse the concept of cheating, or should you engineer it?
Registration open for first Heritage in War conference
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.
Sophie-Grace Chappell blogs at The Junkyard on how to be somebody else
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: Call for Abstracts
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.
Sophie-Grace Chappell blogs on Alan Turing for LGBT History Month
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.
The Heritage in War blog has its first posts!
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.