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Current Projects

BMoral

New Histories of British Moral Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (c. 1690–1800)

This project aims to rethink narratives about 18th-Century British moral philosophy, which to the present day continue to focus predominantly on male authors, despite overwhelming evidence that women participated in the moral debates of this period. The project will analyse a large corpus that is inclusive of moral writings by male and female authors and will shed new light on the intellectual networks in which male and female philosophers interacted.

Principal Investigator: (opens in a new window)Ruth Boeker
Funding: ERC Consolidator Grant (no. 101169707)

  • More soon…

Dublin Dewey Studies

Devoted to supporting scholarship in Ireland on the work of John Dewey and other philosophers in the American Pragmatic tradition

Resources include hardcopy and electronic access to the collected works, correspondence and lectures of John Dewey, as well as an extensive collection of titles relating to classical and contemporary Pragmatism. Dublin Dewey Studies is hosted by the UCD School of Philosophy and is generously supported by the (opens in a new window)Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Principal Investigator: (opens in a new window)James O’Shea
Graduate Researcher: Philipp Wagenhals

InFraMinds

A research project on insincere speech, inner speech, and self-deception

The project brings together scientists and research students from more than a dozen institutions to work on fundamental questions about mental and linguistic representation, especially the nature of insincerity, self-directed speech, and self-deception.

Principal Investigator: (opens in a new window)Elmar Unnsteinsson
Co-Proposer: (opens in a new window)Daniel W. Harris (CUNY Hunter College)
Duration: 2020–2025

Completed Projects

PEriTiA

PEriTiA

Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action

An international research project which explores the conditions under which people trust the experts and expertise that shapes public policy. PEriTiA brings together philosophers, social and natural scientists, policy experts, ethicists, psychologists, media specialists and civil society organisations to conduct a comprehensive multi-disciplinary investigation of trust in and the trustworthiness of policy related expert opinion.

Principal Investigator: Maria Baghramian
Funding: European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation grant
Duration: 2020–2023

NeoplAT

Neoplatonism and Abrahamic Traditions: A comparative analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin West (9th–16th Centuries)

The project offers a fresh and thoroughly documented account of the impact of Pagan Neoplatonism on the Abrahamic traditions. It focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on the Elements of Theology of Proclus (5th Century) which occupies a unique place in the history of thought.

This project radically challenges these conservative narratives both by analysing invaluable, previously ignored resources and by developing an innovative comparative approach that embraces a variety of research methods and disciplines. Specialists in Arabic, Greek and Latin history of ideas, philology, palaeography and lexicography develop an intense interdisciplinary research laboratory investigating the influence of Proclus on the mutual exchanges between the scriptural monotheisms from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries.

  • Principal Investigator: Dragos Calma
  • Funding: European Research Grant (ERC_CoG_771460), hosted jointly by UCD and the Academy of Sciences Vienna
  • Duration: 2018–2023

When Experts Disagree

An interdisciplinary study involving epistemologists, philosophers of science, astrophysicists and environmental scientists

In today’s complex societies many policy decisions depend crucially on expert advice and opinion, but experts can and do disagree, sometimes vehemently, and not all their disagreements seem open to resolution. An immediate question facing policy makers, and in particular those involved in decisions concerning some of the greatest challenges facing humanity, such as environmental policy, is how to react to seemingly “faultless disagreement” among experts, or disagreements where neither side seems to be making any obvious errors, and its sorry corollary, the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of this in the media and civic society.

The current project is interdisciplinary investigation—involving scientists and philosophers—of the ill understood, but socially and politically significant phenomenon of peer disagreement. The ultimate goal of the project is to gain a better understanding of the role and consequences of disagreement among scientific experts and its implications for policy decisions by governmental agencies and the formation of public opinion.

  • Principal Investigators: Maria Baghramian and Luke Drury (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies)
  • Funding: Irish Research Council: New Horizons Strand Two Interdisciplinary Award
  • Duration: November 2015–September 2017
  • Project Website

The American Voice in Philosophy

An interdisciplinary initiative aiming to foreground the literary and historical dimensions of philosophy in America

With four project members based in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin, it is our stated aim to broaden the scope of American philosophy from the analytic tradition as narrowly understood to the discipline’s potential affinities with U.S. intellectual history and literary studies.

  • Principal Investigators: Maria Baghramian, Sarin Marchetti, Áine Mahon, Fergal McHugh
  • Funding: IRCHSS “New Ideas” Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences and UCD Seed Funding
  • Duration: 2012–2014
  • Project Website

Other Research Projects

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Centre for Ethics in Public Life (CEPL) Research
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Newman Centre for the Study of Religions Research
Postdoctoral
Research Projects

See also

UCD School of Philosophy

Room D501 (5th Floor), John Henry Newman Building, UCD Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
T: +353 1 716 8186 | E: philosophy@ucd.ie | Location Map(opens in a new window)

UCD Philosophy is ranked among the Top 100 Departments of Philosophy worldwide (QS World University Rankings 2017, 2018, 2021, 2023–2025)