Philosophy at the University of Reading

10/08/2026

A huge congratulations to our graduating students of 2026!

22/07/2026

Congratulations to Tommaso Vittorio Soriani for his paper "Moral contingentism, personites and countermoral worlds" being published by Synthese! You can read the open access article here:

According to Mark Johnston’s Personite Problem, Perdurantism—the view that persons are maximal fusions of person-stages—should be rejected, as it fails to account for the moral status of non-maximal fusions that overlap a person (personites). His Duplication Argument claims that personites hav...

10/03/2026

In Celebrating inspiring women in our community, meet Dr Michela Bariselli.

Dr Michela has been awarded the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for her project ‘J.L. Austin’s notes for How to Do Things with Words: a case study for the performative approach to archival material’. Together with her Co-Investigator, Leo Townsend, she will begin the research in September 2026.

The project aims to develop a novel approach to the study of archival materials, such as drafts and notes. These materials are traditionally considered valuable only when they help explain a philosopher’s published work or can be edited for publication. This project challenges this view.

Using philosopher J.L. Austin’s notes for How to Do Things with Words as a case study, the project investigates their unpolished elements – such as cancellations and marginalia – as distinctive actions performed with words. The project’s hypothesis is that attending to these actions enriches the philosophical appreciation of the notes themselves, and of Austin’s contribution to philosophy.