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Although members of staff at Southampton work in a wide variety of areas, there is considerable overlap in their research interests. This makes for a lively and productive research environment, and also means that while postgraduate students are assigned one member of staff as their dissertation supervisor, in practice they will always find that there are a number of members of staff who have an interest in their topic of research.
The following are the principal areas of overlapping research expertise (see below for more information):
Other notable areas of shared research interests are:
In addition to the above, Southampton philosophers pursue research in ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophical logic, epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, political philosophy, and on Kant, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Collingwood and Russell.
In recent years, Southampton philosophers have produced a number of books in these areas with publishers such as Routledge and Oxford University Press (see reviews) as well as publishing many articles in international journals, including Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal of Aesthetics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Dialectica, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Ratio.
Information about staff and their research profiles
Analytic aesthetics and the history of aesthetics
With the highest concentration of specialist aestheticians anywhere in the UK, Philosophy at Southampton is uniquely well placed to offer research supervision on aesthetics. There is a wide choice of topics with expert supervision, which might include: tragedy, philosophy of music, pictorial representation, philosophy of film, philosophy of literature, ontology of art, definitions of art, art and morality, aesthetics of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Collingwood, etc.
In the influential Philosophical Gourmet Report (2009), we are ranked =1st in UK and =4th internationally for our work in Philosophy of Art.
Applicants for Ph.D study in this area may be interested in the British Society of Aesthetics PhD Studentship Award.
Nineteenth-century German-speaking philosophy
We offer supervision in all areas of nineteenth-century German-speaking philosophy, with particular research expertise in the work of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Frege. Currently, we are hosting a £300K Arts and Humanities Research Council project, titled Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy, which brings together leading philosophers in the fields of Nietzsche scholarship and contemporary ethics with the aim of assessing, and finding responses to, the challenge that Nietzsche’s critique continues to pose to modern moral philosophy.
In the influential Philosophical Gourmet Report (2009), we are ranked =1st in UK and =5th internationally for our work in nineteenth-century continental philosophy.
Wittgenstein
We have research strengths in all aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought, including his philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and philosophy of religion, and on the relations between Wittgenstein’s thought and the work of Russell, Husserl, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and later twentieth-century philosophers such as Quine and Davidson.
In 2010, we are hosting an international conference, supported by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association, on the theme of Self and Others in Wittgenstein and Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. In the same year, we will host Wittgenstein and Aesthetics, the British Wittgenstein Society's annual conference.
Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Philosophy has teemed up with other disciplines in the University of Southampton’s School of Humanities—specifically, English, History and Music—to establish a Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCECS). Philosophy’s principal contributor to the centre is Dr Alex Neill, an expert on eighteenth-century philosophy and philosophical aesthetics, with a particular interest in the work of David Hume (1711-1776). For details of its activities, visit SCECS.
Research facilities
As the largest university library in southern England, with extensive holdings of printed books and periodicals, Southampton's Hartley Library is sufficient to support most research projects, and has special collections and bibliographic tools for many periods and genres of the subject. Many important research tools are held on CD ROM or on internet licences. All students are given access to the numerous workstations around the university from which it is possible to access the internet and many databases and catalogues. Research students are also given a share of the desk space in a series of special workrooms on the Avenue Campus, equipped with computers, as well as allocated desks in the library. There is plenty of parking at the Avenue Campus itself which is situated a short distance from the centre of the city.
Students will also benefit from our extensive resources in Philosophy, in particular our own well-stocked PhilSoc Library housed in our seminar room, which is run by volunteers and serves as an extremely useful supplement to the Hartley Library.