Our Ulrich Stegmann's chapter in the forthcoming collection, Images of the Plant Humanities, discusses the history of plant morphology - specifically the 18th century insight that different-looking floral organs (like petals and stamens) are actually 'the same' organ.
www.abdn.ac.uk/people/u.ste...
🗞️ Our Eilidh Beaton's latest paper, 'Methodological Nationalism is Not the (best articulation of the) Problem' is now out in Philosophy.
The paper raises worries for calls to outright reject methodological nationalism - i.e. nation-state-centric ways of seeing.
💬 Our Mike Beaney will be delivering the GRIPh annual lecture at the GRoningen Institute of Philosophy this evening. He'll be speaking about his recent book, "The Joy of Chinese Philosophy".
We welcome expressions of interest in the 2026 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme.
Our internal triage deadline is 8th June 2026. Interested candidates should reach out to their prospective mentor & sabine.freitag@abdn.ac.uk ahead of this deadline.
Info ➡️ www.abdn.ac.uk/dhpa/fellows...
🗓️ Reminder: THIS WEEK!
⛰️ Last weekend Philosophy students and staff visited Ballater for the annual Reading Party. The weekend included walking the Seven Bridges and Sgor Buidhe, talks by students and staff and the (in)famous philosophy quiz. #PhilosophyMatters
📖 Join us this Thursday 19th March for a public lecture by Michael Beaney celebrating the publication of his new book, The Joy of Chinese Philosophy.
The event is open to all. Register here:
www.ticketsource.co.uk/confucius-in...
💬 Last week, our Stephan Torre presented this (fabulously-titled) paper at the Geneva Linguistics & Metaphysics of Time Workshop.
www.unige.ch/lettres/phil...
🤖 💭 Check out this workshop on AI Epistemics taking place at the Onassis Library in Athens, co-organised by our Jesper Kallestrup via his Digital Knowledge Project.
💬 🇳🇴 Our Eilidh Beaton is in Oslo today giving a talk in the Dynamic Territory seminar series. She'll be presenting her work on methodological nationalism, forthcoming in "Philosophy".
🗓️ Save the date! Our Jesper Kallestrup is hosting a workshop on the Ethics & Epistemology of AI on Friday 27th March. Contact jesper.kallestrup@abdn.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.
🎓 Postgraduate Fair | Tomorrow!
📍 Elphinstone Hall | ⏰ 11am–6pm
We’re looking forward to welcoming prospective and current students and alumni. Didn’t register? No problem — registration is still open, or just come along.
Full itinerary & register: bit.ly/4jRNPD9
📣 Aberdeen Philosophy students: The ABDN Shadowing Scheme is now open for applications. This is an opportunity to engage in one day of work experience in the public sector, law, or real estate. Deadline 19 Feb, more info here: www.abdn.ac.uk/careers/expe...
📖 Check out our Beth Lord's chapter, "Spinoza and the Galenic Idea of the Human Body", in this new OUP edited collection, Spinoza on the Human Perspective.
💭 Our Jesper Kallestrup is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Glasgow this semester. He'll be working in the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre on the ERC-funded KNOW-HOW Project, led by Adam Carter.
More info on the project here:
🗓️ Save the date! Our Aberdeen Philosophy PGRs are hosting a conference on "Imagination, Fiction, and Extended Reality" this time next week in the Duncan Rice Library. Talks are open to all.
📣 Call for abstracts! We're seeking one more speaker to complete the lineup for our upcoming workshop "Migration and Asylum in Scotland: A Philosophical Perspective". Further details available on the PhilEvents page below.
Submission deadline: Friday 20th March
Contact: eilidh.beaton@abdn.ac.uk
🎓 Postgraduate Fair | Meet the Academics
📍 Elphinstone Hall
📅 17 Feb | ⏰ 11am–6pm
Discover postgrad pathways, conversion programmes, and online and on-campus study options.
Register: bit.ly/4jRNPD9
#AberdeenPGFair #AberdeenPostgrad #NextStepAberdeen
🎉 Congratulations to our graduate student Dr María Bibiloni, who recently passed their PhD Viva with a thesis entitled "A Decolonial Criticism of Content-Based Theories of Slurs".
📣 From 1 January 2026, our Mike Beaney will be taking up a Visiting Chair Professorship in the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at PKU.
🗞️ Check out this new open-access special issue on historical and cross-cultural "deep epistemology" in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Edited by our Mike Beaney, with Karyn Lai.
💬 🇨🇳 Our Mike Beaney has given a series of lectures on analytic Chinese philosophy, cross-cultural epistemology, and Wittgenstein over the past 6 weeks.
Institutions he has presented at include Shanxi, Tsinghua, Wuhan, Hubei, Fudan, and Zhejiang Universities, PKU, SEU, & a Conference in Xiamen.
📖 Our Mike Beaney's The Joy of Chinese Philosophy is now out & available open access. It introduces some central ideas & themes in ancient Chinese philosophy through analysis of the happy fish dialogue in the Zhuangzi, one of the two founding texts of Daoism.
📣 The University of Aberdeen is offering 3 AHRC Doctoral Landscape funding awards for doctoral studentships across the arts and humanities.
Prospective Philosophy applicants can contact eilidh.beaton@abdn.ac.uk. Further info:
💬 Our PhD candidate Frank Burr is giving a talk at the University of Potsdam's graduate conference on Wittgenstein's 1929 Lecture on Ethics this weekend. He'll explore Wittgenstein's use of "the supernatural" in his lecture, as read through a Tolstoyan lens.
4) Knowledge-Qua in Groups (Ergo). In which Jesper develops an account of knowledge-qua occupancy role in a social network, and proposes that this may help deflationists about group knowledge respond to a particular objection to their view.
journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...
3) When Do Groups Have Evidence? (Inquiry). Existing theories of justified group belief face issues accounting for manipulation of evidence. Jesper proposes a solution to this problem for inflationists.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
2) A Causal Exclusion Problem for Knowledge-First Epistemology (International Journal of Philosophical Studies) - in which Jesper defends a new objection against knowledge-first epistemology.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
1) Why Demagogues Lie Big, with Matteo Michelini (Episteme). Jesper & Matteo argue that big lies may serve 3 purposes, and that public endorsement by the demagogue's supporters, but not necessarily genuine belief, is what's needed to achieve these goals. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🗞️ Our Jesper Kallestrup has been on a publishing streak! Here's a roundup of some of his latest papers.