Engaged philosophy

‘Engaged Philosophy’ sums up the work in the department that makes a difference in the wider world, by engaging on a practical level with real-world problems and by bringing philosophy to an audience beyond academia.

Our work in this area currently falls into three main categories: environmental sustainability, diversity in philosophy, and public engagement. However, staff and PhD students have a range of other relevant interests including animal ethics, ageing, and mental disorders; check the 'our people' list for more on these.

Better evidence

How should we judge whether interventions – e.g., treatments, public policies and laws – are effective? How should we establish causal claims in the health and social sciences?

We host a research group that is developing a new philosophical theory of causal enquiry, Evidential Pluralism, which seeks to answer these questions. Evidential Pluralism can help us to make better use of the available evidence to make more informed judgements of effectiveness.

We engage with evaluators outside academia to help improve methods for evidence review. 

Current research projects:

Departmental staff

External collaborators

Environmental sustainability

Focusing on environmental justice and the economic valuation of environmental goods.

We have philosophers working on problems concerned with how we should: value the environment, the limits of market valuations, our attitudes towards the environment and motivations to act on them, and environmental justice.

Some recent research projects and their impact

Doing philosophy sustainably

In our AHRC-funded project The Age of Metaphysical Revolution (2016-19), we took steps to reduce the carbon footprint that is associated with a large research project by testing out ways of running hybrid/in-person conferences and workshops.

Another outcome of this project was that Fraser MacBride developed the British Philosophical Association's Sustainability Guidelines for Business Travel, which have so far been endorsed by some 23 philosophy departments in the UK.

Diversity in Philosophy

We are trying to make philosophy a more inclusive and diverse profession. Our work in this area includes:

  • The University of Manchester is hosting the Diversity Reading List 10th Anniversary Conference, organised by Justina Berskyte, Lucija Duda, and Joseph Bentley.
  • The BPA/SWIP report, Women in Philosophy in the UK, co-authored by Helen Beebee and Jenny Saul in 2011, has been widely cited in subsequent reports by other professional associations and learned societies, and has guided empirical research into the underrepresentation of women.
  • The BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme was devised by Beebee and Saul and launched in 2014. Its subscribers include some 27 UK philosophy departments, most of the main UK philosophy learned societies and journals, and several overseas departments and societies.
  • Frederique Janssen-Lauret works on the role, and marginalisation as historical figures, of women in the history of analytic philosophy. She has published papers on, for example, Susan Stebbing, Christine Ladd-Franklin and Constance Jones, Ruth Barcan Marcus and women in Logical Empiricism, and on using texts by women in teaching philosophical logic. Anne-Marie McCallion has worked with the In Parenthesis project on the Wartime Quartet (Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgeley and Iris Murdoch), who flourished at a time when men were largely absent from the philosophical scene in Oxford.
  • Helen Beebee co-authored the BPA's Guidelines for Accessible Conferences and Guidelines for Accessible Public Lectures with Giulia Felappi and Alex Gregory. These are aimed at making philosophy events more inclusive for those with a range of disabilities.

Public engagement

Our annual public lecture series, the Dorothy Emmet Lectures - generously funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy - has run since 2016.

The department is also host to the regionals of the The Ethics Cup, a philosophy competition for school and college students aiming to promote interest in philosophy to secondary school students, and serves as to promote and model informed, civil debate on important societal issues.

Our staff and PhD students also regularly give talks in local schools and colleges.