Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield

08/04/2026

We are pleased to share a call for abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference organised by one of our postdoctoral fellows, Lorenzo Sartori, on epistemological, methodological, and hermeneutical perspectives on visual representations in the medical sciences.

The conference will take place in Sheffield, on 17–18 September 2026 . It will be in-person only.

The deadline for abstracts is 15 April 2026, with notifications of acceptance to be received in May.

For full details, see: https://lorenzosartori93.word-press.com/imi-conference/

Overview Medical images—such as X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, and increasingly AI-generated or AI-assisted visualizations—play a central role in contemporary medical knowledge and practice. …

30/03/2026

We have been honoured to be selected as the UK Philosophy Department of the Year for 2026 by the British Philosophical Association.

The judges highlighted this part of the nomination:

“Philosophy at Sheffield has a longstanding reputation for combining academic excellence with friendliness. In practice, we see philosophy as a form of inquiry where community, fellowship, and collective flourishing are at the heart of what we do. A major achievement has been renewing and protecting our outstanding academic culture in the face of institutional adversity […] and the tragic loss of two senior colleagues. We have done this by engaging in small and big ways of cultivating a community of learners and researchers who support one another, collaborate regularly, and raise each others’ ambitions.”

We are also very pleased to share that our own ChongMing Lim won the Early Career Award for Philosophical Research for his work on commemoration and that our own Jim Chamberlain was the co-winner of the prize for Contribution of Research Outwith the Academy for his work in the Philosophy in Prisons project.

An awards ceremony took place online last Friday. It was very heartening to see all the great work being done in Philosophy in the UK celebrated all in one place.

Well done to all the winners!

https://bpa.ac.uk/prizes2026/

The British Philosophical Association is delighted to celebrate the inaugural recipients of our new BPA Prizes. These awards were established to recognise and promote the outstanding breadth, depth, and public value of philosophical work taking place across the UK today. Philosophy flourishes in man...

24/02/2026

Is there a right to secession? And if so how does it work? Can anywhere just declare that it is an independent country? And what exactly its a country? Discuss. Maybe with reference to Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Catlonia, Quebec, the former Soviet Union, Taiwan, the American Confederacy and - just for fun, why not? - Pimlico. Watch the film and join the discussion. Philosophy at the Showroom. This Thursday. 6pm.

Residents of a part of London declare independence, when they discover an old treaty. This leads to the need for a 'Passport to Pimlico'.

11/02/2026

Delighted to share that we have been placed in the Top Ten both for the overall quality of our PhD programme, and also in the ratings of departmental climate, in the latest Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (APDA) graduate programme survey!

This is out of 149 primarily English-speaking graduate programmes in Philosophy across the world and in response to the questions: “How likely would you be to recommend this program to prospective PhD students?” and “Rate your satisfaction with this program’s efforts to foster a healthy, respectful academic culture or climate”.

We are pleased and honoured that our efforts are recognised by our graduate students.

For more, read the full survey results at the link:

What’s the latest data about philosophy graduate programs? In the following guest post, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, professor of philosophy at UC Merced and director of Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (APDA), shares results from the latest APDA survey, completed at the end of 2025. It includes i...

17/10/2025

We are delighted to announce that our very own CM Lim has been awarded the Brian Barry Prize in Political Science for his essay ‘Civil Disobedience and State Anxiety’! Well done CM!

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/prizes-medals/brian-barry-prize-political-science/?fbclid=IwdGRjcANfRb5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHicHjwA4joIMMa-fyXtGJTs7WroK5xO2VYsxCoV4IAVe88GMxAZCo2coIFCs_aem_-dLzYOhr8fn5EM_B3FFBRQ

The Brian Barry Prize, worth £1500, is awarded annually for excellence in political science, with the winning essay published in the British Journal of Political Science.

14/08/2025

We are very pleased to share that our own Jules Holroyd has had their latest book, Oppressive Praise (OUP, 2025), long-listed for the prestigious Nayef Al-Rodhan prize, awarded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy for “exceptional discipline-transcending works”.

See the full longlist here:

The Royal Institute of Philosophy unveils the longlist for the 2025 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy. Learn more.

09/06/2025

Join us on Monday the 16th of June at 4.30pm in the John Carr Library in Mappin Building for our 'New Books in Philosophy' celebration event!

This event will introduce the recently published books in epistemology, metaethics, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, as well as in moral and social philosophy, written by Sheffield philosophers, Jules Holroyd, Paul Faulkner, Jimmy Lenman, Eric Olson, and Ryan Byerly.

All are welcome. Full details at the link:

Date: 16th June, 4.30-5.30pm John Carr Library, Frederick Mappin Building. Come and celebrate the new books published in Philosophy, by philosophers at Sheffield! Find out more about the cutting ed…

05/06/2025

We are excited to share that our very own Ben Davies is organising an upcoming conference on 'The Ethics of Health Communication', funded by the British Academy and Wellcome Trust and supported by our own Centre for Engaged Philosophy.


It will take place at the British Academy in London on June 24-25 2025.

Panels will bring philosophers into discussion with health and public health professionals on questions of communication in public health, clinical care, pregnancy, birthing and post-natal contexts, as well as critical care.

Speakers will be coming from Trinity College Dublin, the Uehiro Oxford Institute, the University of Cambridge, the University of Nottingham, the University of Manchester, Wageningen University, the University of Liverpool, the University of York, the University of Bristol, Lancaster University, the UK Association of Directors of Public Health, and -- of course -- the University of Sheffield (Jules Holroyd will be speaking as well as Ben, and the Chairs will be two of our PhD students, Joe Holmes and Charlie Potter).

Full details can be found here:

How should doctors and other health officials communicate effectively and ethically with the public? This conference brings together a variety of speakers working at the intersection of philosophical ethics and health practice, to explore the ethical and political issues that can arise in the contex...

23/05/2025

Please join us the Chris Hookway Memorial Lecture. It will occur on Monday 2 June 2025, starting at 3:00pm, at the Council Room in Firth Court at The University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN.

This memorial lecture is in honour of Emeritus Professor Chris Hookway, who sadly passed away in October 2024 (see https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/news/chris-hookway-1949-2024).

The paper, entitled "Pragmatism, Truth and Politics", is jointly authored by Cheryl Misak (University of Toronto) and Robert B. Talisse (Vanderbilt University), who will present the lecture together.

The lecture and discussion will be followed by a drinks reception.

All are welcome.

The lecture is kindly being sponsored by The Charles Peirce Society, of which both Chris and Cheryl were once presidents.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/events/chris-hookway-memorial-lecture

This memorial lecture is in honour of Emeritus Professor Chris Hookway, who sadly died in October 2024, see https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/news/chris-hookway-1949-2024.

26/03/2025

Tomorrow morning at 9am, our very own Dr Komarine Romdenh-Romluc will be on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time talking to Melvyn Bragg and others about the important 20th century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Listen live on BBC Radio 4 and at the link after the broadcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002974s

Insights into the relationship between the body and the mind, habits, language and thought

25/03/2025

Last Friday, at our Research Seminar, our very own Prof. Chris Bennett gave a talk entitled: 'The Relevance of Apology and Corrective Justice to Reparations for Historical Injustice'.

This was part of the BPA's campaign to highlight the practical significance of philosophy.

Here is Chris's abstract:

"Supporters as well as opponents of reparations for large scale historical injustices often reject corrective justice as an inapplicable model. If this were correct, reparations for such injustices could only consist in an alternative such as generalised distributive justice obligations. However, I argue that this would be insufficient to address the injustice and would allow wrongdoing to pass with impunity. If so, perhaps we need to look again at whether we are right to dispense with the corrective justice model. Corrective justice is rejected because, as in tort law, it is identified with compensation. Plausibly the model of compensation is inapplicable to large scale historical injustice. But I argue that compensation is an insufficient basis for corrective justice. A more adequate account of the normative basis of corrective justice is found in the understanding of making amends embodied in our practice of apology. There we discover that penitential obligations persist in cases in which compensatory obligations are impossible. I back this up with an account of apology as an expressive action."

18/12/2024

https://philosophynow.org/issues/165/Robert_Stern

Robert Stern talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.