Research

The department's research staff is comprised of twenty permanent members, plus a number of post-doctoral researchers. The department is dedicated to high-quality academic research, and scored highly in the recent REF.

Staff members' research interests are diverse, spanning all of the major areas of philosophy, and with numerous inter-disciplinary links. In recent years the department has hosted a number of major research projects, with external funding from the Wellcome Institute, the ERC, the AHRC, and the Leverhulme Trust, among others. The department puts on regular workshops, seminars and conferences, and welcomes a regular stream of visiting scholars from around the world. 

The department is particularly noted for its strength in the philosophy of science, logic and mathematics, for which it is one of the major centres in the English-speaking world. The department is home to the Centre for Science and Philosophy, which promotes the interpretation of science through collaboration with other disciplines, and to the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science, which promotes work at the intersection of philosophy and the medical sciences. Other areas of research strength include ethics and political philosophy, history of philosophy, and philosophy of mind and language.

For more details about our research see our people profiles.

Research areas

• Epistemology: formal epistemology and decision theory, epistemic utility theory.
• Ethics and Political  Philosophy: virtue ethics, Kantian ethics.
• History of Philosophy: Kant, Heidegger, Leibniz, Aristotle.
• Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics: theories of truth, self-reference and paradoxes, structuralism.
• Philosophy of Biology: foundations of evolutionary theory, social evolution, explanation in genetics and molecular biology.
• Philosophy of Medicine: the nature of illness, the phenomenology of health
• Philosophy of Mind and Language: representation, fictional objects, formal semantics.
• Philosophy of Physics: space and time, foundations of quantum mechanics, chaos and dynamical systems.
• Philosophy of Science: realism and anti-realism, the metaphysics of science, induction and probability, values in science.

Research Projects

The department has a strong track record of securing major research grants. A selection of our current and recent externally funded projects is listed below.

• Open Quantum Systems and Causal Structure of Reality
  • John Templeton Foundation grant; Karim Thébault (2026-29)
  • Developing a framework for open quantum systems without fixed causal structure
• Learning from Experience and Agency in Displacement
  • ERC Starting Grant; Rebecca Buxton (2026–31)
  • Refugee-led methods in the political philosophy of migration and displacement.
• Explicating Singularity Resolution: From Black Holes to Quantum Cosmology
  • Leverhulme Trust research grant; Karim Thébault (2026–30)
  • Singularity resolution in black hole physics and quantum cosmology.
• Prediction, Explanation and Understanding in Chemistry in the Age of AI
  • AHRC grant; James Ladyman and Emanuele Ratti (2027–30)
  • How the use of AI in chemistry changes prediction, explanation and understanding.
• Expressing Value in Language
  • ERC Starting Grant; Poppy Mankowitz (2025–30)
  • Investigating evaluative language through philosophy, theoretical linguistics and experimental linguistics.
• Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare
  • Wellcome Discovery Award; Havi Carel (2023–29)
  • Epistemic injustice in clinical care and its effects on health inequalities.
• Representing Evolution
  • ERC Advanced Grant; Samir Okasha (2021–26)
  • Representations of biological evolution in science, education and communication.
• Using People Well, Treating People Badly: Towards a Kantian Realm of Ends and Means
  • AHRC-DFG grant; Martin Sticker (2023–26)
  • Kant's moral and political philosophy and its application to contemporary ethical questions.
• Epistemic Utility for Imprecise Probability
  • ERC Starting Grant; Jason Konek (2020–26)
  • Accuracy measures and epistemic utility for imprecise probabilities.

Collaborations

Staff are actively engaged in research collaborations with colleagues in physics, biology, medicine, economics, politics, mathematics and anthropology. The Department of Philosophy hosts and is involved in the following interdisciplinary research centres:

• Centre for Science and Philosophy brings together philosophers and scientists to deepen the understanding and interpretation of science.
• Centre for Health, Humanities and Science promotes multidisciplinary research in humanities, medicine, health and science
• Foundational Studies Bristol is an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the study of logic and philosophy of mathematics.

We have strong research links with philosophy departments internationally, hosting joint events and research collaborations.