People

Academic

You can also find a list of our staff, by area of specialisation, on the Research page. Here, they are listed alphabetically.

Academic permanent staff

• Dr Simona Aimar: Ancient Philosophy, Metaphysics, Semantics
• Dr Tim Button: Philosophy of Language, Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics 
• Dr Luke Fenton-Glynn: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science
• Prof Sebastian Gardner: Aesthetics, German Idealism, 19th-century German Philosophy, Kant
• Dr Ulrike Heuer: Philosophy of Action, Ethics
• Dr Joe Horton: Ethics, Political Philosophy
• Prof John Hyman: Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Art, Epistemology, Ethics, Wittgenstein
• Prof Mark Eli Kalderon: Ancient philosophy (Aristotle & Epidocles), Philosophy of Perception, Philosophy of Colour
• Dr Douglas Lavin: Philosophy of Action, Ethics, History of Ethics
• Dr Fiona Leigh: Ancient Philosophy (particularly Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind)
• Dr Rory Madden: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind
• Prof Véronique Munoz-Dardé: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Rawls, Rousseau
• Prof Lucy O'Brien: Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Emotion, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind
• Dr Sarah Richmond: Ethics, Sartre
• Prof Daniel Rothschild: Philosophy of Language, Linguistic Semantics
• Dr Robert Simpson: Applied Ethics, Political Philosophy, Social Epistemology
• Dr Tom Stern: Aesthetics, 19th-century German Philosophy
• Dr Han van Wietmarschen: Epistemology, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy
• Prof James Wilson: Normative Ethics, Public Health Ethics, Philosophy of Public Policy
• Prof José Zalabardo: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical Semantics, Wittgenstein

Research fellows

• Dr Merrick Anderson: Ancient Philosophy (particularly Plato's moral and political philosophy)
• Dr Claire Hogg: Moral Philosophy, Law
• Kacper Kowalczyk: Decision Theory, Ethics, Metaphysics

Associate Lecturers

• Dr Owen Griffiths: Logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics
• Dr Richard Healey: Moral, Political, Legal Philosophy
• Dr Rory Phillips: German Idealism, Philosophy of Religion
• Dr Ben Sorgiovanni: Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, Wittgenstein, Ethics
• Dr Saloni de Souza: Ancient Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Philosophy of Medicine, Metaphysics

Affiliated academic staff

• Dr Richard Breheny (Div of Psychology & Lang Sciences)
• Prof Robyn Carston (Div of Psychology & Lang Sciences)
• Prof Sarah Edwards (Dept of Science & Technology Studies)
• Dr Nathan Klinedinst (Div of Psychology & Lang Sciences)
• Prof George Letsas (Faculty of Laws)
• Dr Saladin D Meckled-Garcia (Dept of Political Science)
• Prof David J Pym (Dept of Computer Science and the Alan Turing Institute)
• Dr Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed (Institute of Advanced Studies)
• Prof Mary C. Rawlinson (Institute of Advanced Studies)
• Prof Philip Schofield (Faculty of Laws)
• Dr Yasutada Sudo (Div of Psychology & Lang Sciences)
• Prof John Vorhaus (UCL Institute of Education)

Honorary & Emeritus

• Prof Rachel Barney (Visiting Professor)
• Prof Timothy Clarke (Honorary Senior Lecturer)
• Prof Malcolm Budd (Emeritus Grote Professor)
• Prof Marcus Giaquinto (Honorary Emeritus)
• Prof Ted Honderich (Emeritus Professor)
• Dr Nils Kürbis (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Prof Michael Martin (Honorary Professor)
• Dr Barry Stocker (Honorary Senior Research Associate)
• Prof Nick Zangwill (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Dr Arnold Zuboff (Honorary Senior Research Associate)

Administrative

Administrative staff

The Department Office is located in room 101 of 19 Gordon Square and is open for student enquiries 10-12 and 2-4pm.

Department Manager
Sophie Grant
sophie.grant@ucl.ac.uk

Graduate Administrator
Richard Edwards
r.edwards@ucl.ac.uk
020 7679 7115

Undergraduate Administrator
Emily Wilkes
e.wilkes@ucl.ac.uk
020 7679 3610

BA Teaching and Learning Administrator
Joe Tilley
joseph.tilley@ucl.ac.uk

BA Student Adviser
Karthik Sundaram
k.sundaram@ucl.ac.uk

Academic staff by administrative role

• Head of Department: Dr Tim Button
• Departmental Tutor (Undergraduates): Dr Joe Horton (Term 1&3, in term 2 Dr Luke Fenton-Glynn)
• Departmental Graduate Tutor (Taught students): Dr Rory Phillips
• Departmental Graduate Tutor (Research students): Dr Han van Wietmarschen (Term 1: Prof Mark Kalderon)
• Contact for Graduate Admissions: Dr Luke Fenton-Glynn
• Admissions Tutor (BA): Dr Sarah Richmond
• Outreach /Widening Participation Officer: Dr Simona Aimar
• Placement Coordinator (Research Students): Dr Fiona Leigh
• Chair of Examiners: Dr Rory Madden
• Chair of Departmental Teaching Committee: Dr Luke Fenton-Glynn
• Chair of Departmental Staff Student Consultative Committee (department chair): Dr Tim Button
• Affiliate Tutor: TBC
• E-Learning Champion: Richard Edwards
• NSS Liaison Officer: Emily Wilkes
• Inclusion Lead: Sophie Grant 
• Green Champion: Sophie Grant

Students

PhD students

• Showkat Ali: Ethics, Political Philosophy
   
• Euan Allison: 
  
  
  My research focuses on social hierarchy – particularly caste, stigma, and prestige – from both a descriptive and normative perspective.  This has led me to work on the neighbouring social phenomena of shaming and esteeming, as well as emotional experiences of shame and pride that are often implicated in them.
• Thomas Avery
   
• George Britten-Neish: 
  
  
  I‘m interested in perceptual experience as the most familiar and ongoing point of contact between mind and world. Informed by contemporary cognitive science and philosophy, my thesis tries to answer questions about what it is that perceptual experience put us in touch with, and how this contact is structured across time.
   
• Christabel Cane: 
  
  
  My primary interests are in the philosophy of physics, logic and metaphysics - specifically regarding modality and time. I'm also a big fan of David Lewis.
   
• Lucas Chebib: 
  
  
  I spend the long nights thinking about indeterminacy, authority and imagination in ethics; about how we work out what sorts of people we are and what sorts of people we need to be; about love and wishful thinking. Please talk to me about Bernard Williams, Pre-Raphaelite art and The Arsenal.
   
• Chandler Clark
   
• Nicholas Currie: Early Modern Philosophy, Kant, History of Logic, Philosophy of Logic, Representationalism
   
• Catherine Dale:
  
  
  My research focuses on the metaphysics of persons and human agency, particularly their interpersonal aspects, and related topics in philosophy of mind and moral psychology. In my work, I think about gender and feminism, disability, childhood, and empirical research. I also knit and crochet, a lot.
   
• Luca Dondoni:
  
  
  Before joining UCL, Luca Dondoni completed an MPhil. Stud. in Philosophy at King’s College London, and studied at Collegio Ghislieri (Pavia, IT), where he received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pavia, and an M.A. from IUSS. His main research interests lie at the crossroads between ancient Greek philosophy (especially later Plato and the Presocratics) and contemporary metaphysics of mind (especially consciousness), with a specific focus on the distribution of mind within the physical reality.
   
• Will Eckersley: 
  
  
  Philosophy of Fiction, Virtue Ethics, Ancient Philosophy.
   
• Sepehr Ehsani: 
  
  
  Sepehr studied pathobiology at the University of Toronto at the BSc and PhD levels, and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT from 2013 to 2016. He has been studying philosophy at UCL since 2017 and is researching the augmentation of mechanistic explanations of disease with hypothesized cell biological principles.
   
• Taylor Enoch:
  
  
  Taylor's research interests are in aesthetics, neuroesthetics, and phenomenology. His doctoral research is on methodology for studying aesthetic experiences, and proposes a neuro-phenomenological approach based on the method of epoché.
   
• Lawrence Evans
   
• Josh Goh: 
  
  
  I'm interested in most areas of metaphysics, and some philosophy of religion. My thesis is on the metaphysics of causation.
   
• Alice Harberd: 
  
  
  I am a first-year PhD student working at the intersection of Aesthetics, Value Theory and Philosophy of Mind. I'm interested in whether there are cognitive aspects of artistic value, and if there are, how they relate to self-knowledge and the affective significance we ascribe to what we already know. I also work as a classical singer. I love cooking and have two cats. 
   
• Lizzy Holt: 
  
  
  My research focuses on questions in moral and political philosophy, and on topics in feminism and philosophy. In particular, I work on issues concerning our sexual relations. If you are looking for the other bald philosopher who worked on sex, see: michel-foucault.com.
   
• Jack Hume: 
  
  
  My main interests lie in moral and political philosophy, and my PhD investigates justifications for government funding of the arts. I’m also a musician and I love hiking and cooking.
   
• Tasnim Ismail: I am interested in phenomenology and personal identity.
   
• Kirstine la Cour:
  
  
  I work on accountability and communication as these figure in debates within moral responsibility, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of language. I also spent a year of my PhD in UCL Linguistics. I am currently writing my thesis on the moral psychology of apology.
   
• Antonio Chun-Yu Lao: 
  
  
  Ancient philosophy, particularly Plato
   
• Chris Leak: 
   
• Kim Leontiev: 
   
• Michael Markunas:
  
  
  My research interests are in the philosophy of perception and epistemology. I am writing a dissertation on knowledge by acquaintance. I defend the view that knowledge by acquaintance is a form of non-propositional knowledge. I use this view to solve some puzzles in the philosophy of mind and maths. 
   
• Alex Murphy: 
  
  
  I research how virtual reality can improve various parts of our theoretical philosophy. I consider what virtual reality might teach us about different theories of meaning and phenomenal experience. I hope to use these insights to improve semantic responses to scepticism and to develop our understanding of the ineffable.
   
• Oushinar Nath: 
  
  
  My primary philosophical interests are in epistemology (particularly, epistemological issues pertaining to virtues), and before coming to UCL I studied philosophy at the Universities of Oxford and Sussex. When not doing philosophy, I like to make miniature aircraft models.
   
• Pat Nogoy: 
  
  
  I am a PhD research student. My research is in the intersection of religion and politics. In particular, I am exploring various liberal approaches (e.g. liberal neutrality, political liberalism, and liberal perfectionism) that respond to the puzzle of state accommodation of religion and its component goods. My other philosophical interests include phenomenology,  post-modern continental philosophy (e.g. Heidegger, Levinas, and Jean-Luc Marion), and Christian philosophy (e.g. Aquinas, Augustine, Caputo, Hans urs von Balthasar). 
• Bárbara Núñez de Cáceres Gonzalez
   
• Filippa Ronquist: 
  
  
  My PhD research focuses on contemporary political realism, including realist notions of legitimacy, and the concepts of power, coercion and violence. I’ve got a special interest in the political philosophy of Hobbes, Weber and Bernard Williams.
   
• Rebecca Rowson: 
  
  
  My work challenges prevailing ideas about the metaphysics of expression, focusing on topics that intersect the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of emotion.   I have been runner up in the UCL philosophy fantasy football league for a regrettable number of years.  
   
• Kenta Sekine: 
  
  
  Ethics, political philosophy, moral psychology.
   
• David Sommer
   
• Leora Urim Sung: 
  
  
  Leora is a third year PhD student with research interests in moral aggregation and moral uncertainty. Her PhD thesis, supervised by Dr Joe Horton, aims to provide non-consequentialist arguments to save the many, based on what we are rationally required to do given certain moral premises. 
   
• Jean-Philippe Thomas: My main research interests lie in ethics and metaphysics. I particularly enjoy working on issues (e.g. the non-identity problem) where both areas intersect.
   
• Michael Thorne: 
  
  
  I'm interested in the later Wittgenstein, epistemology (especially questions about "genealogy"), and moral philosophy. My thesis explores Wittgenstein's idea that thinking takes place against an "inherited background".
   
• Nikhil Venkatesh: 
  
  
  My research focuses primarily on utilitarianism, particularly exploring its connection to the social. I’m also interested in collective action, the long-term future of humanity, in Marxism, race and feminism, and in the nature of politics, normativity and morality.
   
• Victor Braga Weber: 
  
  
  I work on the relationship between genetic (particularly historical) knowledge and political realism. My research has led me to topics in political philosophy, ethics, the philosophy of language, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of history, as well as to an interdisciplinary research year in the UCL History Department. 
   
• Fiona Whittingham: 
  
  
  I am interested in philosophy of mind and areas where this interlaps with ethics and metaphysics, including action theory, autonomy and responsibility, and theories of representation, especially anti-representationalism.
   
• Tom Williams

MPhil Students

• Samuel Abel
   
• Liam Barer
   
• Daniel Beatty
   
• Rosa Bell
   
• Dominic Bowles
   
• James Brassington
   
• James Cornish
   
• Laura Custers
   
• Benjamin Davis: (BA Honours, Philosophy, University of Leeds; MA, Philosophy, UCL) Ben's MPhil thesis is on doxastic responsibility. This involves looking at problems in normative epistemology and cognate areas of philosophy such as mental agency and moral responsibility. Ben also has interests in the philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of religion and the philosophy of psychiatry. 
   
• Beatrice Doidge
   
• Thomas Forster
   
• India Griffiths
   
• Adam Haddour
   
• Daniel Hague
   
• Matthew Harris
   
• Karri Heikkinen: 
  
  
  My interests lie in moral and political philosophy, particularly questions relating to future people and population ethics. My MPhil thesis explores various potential objections to strong longtermism, a view proposed by Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill. Before UCL, I completed a degree in Philosophy and Politics at University of Glasgow. 
   
• Ömer Kayacı
   
• Dilara Küçük
   
• Hongyi Li: 
  
  
  Hongyi is interested in reflections about freedom, responsibility, and living well. He pursues them from contemporary ethics, philosophy of mind and action, and the European philosophical tradition starting from Kant. He also has a strong interest in legal and political philosophy, especially insofar as they shed light on those issues.
   
• Harry Long
   
• Katie Lowe
   
• Jelena Milosavljevic: 
  
  
  I am interested in ancient theories of action and moral psychology, particularly those found in Aristotle's ethics. My MPhil research is on his evaluation of pleasures and its application to some problem cases, such as akrasia. More broadly, I also like contemporary metaethics, and sometimes I try to understand Hegel.
   
• Alba Miriello: 
  
  
  At UCL, I research on Plato's Republic.
   
• Dylan Ngan
   
• Asia Sakchatchawan
   
• Achilleas Sarantaris
   
• Erica Stanley: 
  
  
  (BSc Politics & Philosophy, LSE) My interests include ethics, political philosophy and moral psychology. My current dissertation project focuses on duties to resist oppression from the perspective of it's victims.
   
• Helena Ward
   
• Liane Wergen: 
  
  
  Liane’s primary interests are in sexual ethics, social epistemology, theories of autonomy and moral philosophy. Currently, she is doing research on ideology critique, pornography, and consent. 
   
• Ying Xue: I'm interested in the philosophy of action, especially topics about irrationality (e.g. akrasia).
   
• Yiran Yang