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
• Prof Tim Button: Philosophy of Language, Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics 
• Dr Sam Carter: Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Logic
• Dr Giulia Cavaliere: Applied Ethics, Feminist Theory, Political Philosophy.
• Dr Colin Chamberlain: 17th- and 18th-century European Philosophy
• Dr Andreas Ditter: Metaphysics, Philosophical Logic, Philosophy of Language
• Prof Peter Fritz: Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language.
• 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 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
• Prof Daniel Rothschild: Philosophy of Language, Linguistic Semantics
• Dr Robert Simpson: Applied Ethics, Political Philosophy, Social Epistemology
• Prof 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 Oliver Spinney: British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
• Leora Sung: Society of Applied Philosophy Postdoctoral Fellow 

Associate Lecturers

• Dr Rory Phillips: German Idealism, Philosophy of Religion

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 Jeffrey Howard (Dept of Political Science)
• 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 Malcolm Budd (Emeritus Grote Professor)
• Prof Timothy Clarke (Honorary Senior Lecturer)
• Dr Nilanjan Das (Honorary Associate Professor)
• Dr Donald Franklin (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Prof Marcus Giaquinto (Honorary Emeritus)
• Prof Ted Honderich (Emeritus Professor)
• Dr Nils Kürbis (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Prof Michael Martin (Honorary Professor)
• Dr Allison Murphy (Honorary Lecturer)
• Dr Sarah Richmond (Honorary Associate Professor)
• Dr Barry Stocker (Honorary Senior Research Associate)
• Prof Nick Zangwill (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Dr Arnold Zuboff (Honorary Senior Research Associate)

Teaching Staff Term One Office Hours

First Name	Last Name	Office Location	Term 1 Office hour
Simona	Aimar	121 - Foster Court	by appointment
Tim	Button	G02 - 19 Gordon Sq	by appointment
Sam	Carter	3.4A - 33-35 Torrington Pl	Fridays 10.30am
Giulia	Cavaliere	404 - 19 Gordon Sq	Tuesdays 11.30am
Colin	Chamberlain	B06 - 18 Gordon Sq	by appointment
Andreas	Ditter	B07 - 18 Gordon Sq	Fridays 10.30am
Peter	Fritz	303 - 19 Gordon Sq	Wednesdays 10am
Ulrike	Heuer	B01 - 19 Gordon Sq	Tuesdays 1.30pm
Joe	Horton	118 - Foster Court	Wednesdays 10-12
Mark	Kalderon	B02 - 19 Gordon Sq	Mondays 2pm
Rory	Madden	402 - 19 Gordon Sq	Tuesdays 3pm
Lucy	O'Brien	302 - 19 Gordon Sq	Wednesdays 11am
Rory	Phillips	2.3 - 33-35 Torrington Pl	Thursdays 12 noon
Daniel	Rothschild	301 - 33-35 Torrington Pl	Tuesdays 9.30am
Tom	Stern	3.1 - 33-35 Torrington Pl	Tuesdays 3.30pm
Han	van Wietmarschen	3.3 - 33-35 Torrington Pl	Thursdays 2pm
James	Wilson	G04 - 19 Gordon Sq	Thursdays 4pm
José	Zalabardo	201 - 19 Gordon Sq	Thursdays 11am

 

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
Amarjit Sagoo
a.sagoo@ucl.ac.uk

Senior Teaching and Learning Administrator (Postgraduate)
Richard Edwards
r.edwards@ucl.ac.uk

Senior Teaching and Learning Administrator (Undergraduate)
Emily Wilkes
e.wilkes@ucl.ac.uk

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

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

Academic staff by administrative role

• Head of Department: Prof Tim Button
• Departmental Tutors:
  • Undergraduate tutor: Dr Joe Horton
  • MA tutor: Professor James Wilson
  • MPhil Stud tutor: Dr Andreas Ditter
  • PhD tutor: Professor Mark Eli Kalderon
• Admissions Tutors:
  • Undergraduate admissions:Dr Giulia Cavaliere
  • MA admissions: Professor James Wilson
  • Graduate research students (MPhil Stud; PhD): Dr Colin Chamberlain
• Careers officer: Dr Ulrike Heuer
• Chair of Departmental Teaching Committee: Dr Rory Madden
• EDI Lead: Dr Colin Chamberlain
• Chair of Examiners: Prof Peter Fritz
• Co-chair of Staff Student Consultative Committee: Prof Tim Button
• Outreach / Widening Participation Officer: Dr Sam Carter
• Placement Coordinator (PGR Students): Dr Fiona Leigh
• E-Learning Champion: Richard Edwards
• NSS Liaison Officer: Emily Wilkes
• Green Champion: TBC

Students

PhD students

• Thomas Avery
• Arianna Bosio
  
  
  My current interests are in moral philosophy, especially as applied to the field of global priorities research, epistemology, and I also have side-interests in philosophy of mind and of biology. Before coming to UCL, I obtained an MA from King's College London, and a BA from Essex, both in Philosophy.  
• Emmanuel Champion-Dye
   
• Christabel Cane: 

I'm interested in how objects can be different to themselves - specifically across time and according to various counterfactual possibilities. My thesis advocates a metaphysics of objects that highlights the role of temporal and modal parts to explain these differences. 

• 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.
   
• Luka Chilvers
   
• Cristina Diana Craciun
  
  
  My primary areas of interest are the Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology. I’m especially interested in the rationality of emotions, and my thesis will focus on emotions about imagined scenarios and fiction.  When not doing philosophy, I’m likely reading, writing stories, rock climbing, or playing video games. https://medium.com/@diana.c10
   
• 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.
  
   
• 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
  I am mainly interested in ancient philosophy, particularly Aristotle and Plato, but I also have a broad interest in the history of philosophy generally. My research is focused primarily on Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia (or happiness).
   
• 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. 
   
• Karri Heikkinen: 
  
  
  I'm a first-year PhD student working in normative and applied ethics. My interests include population ethics, future people, interpersonal aggregation, animal ethics, and how we ought to act under risk and uncertainty. Outside of philosophy, I compete in freestyle skiing on national UK university level with UCL Snowsports.
   
• Lizzy Holt: 
  
  
  My research interests are in moral and political philosophy, and in feminist theory. I mainly work on issues concerning our sexual relations, ‘structural injustice’, and the relationship between those two things. If you are looking for the other bald philosopher who worked on sex, see: michel-foucault.com.
   
• Jack Hume: 
  
  
  My research explores the relationship between liberal democracy and artistic expression. For instance, why should governments support artistic and cultural goods, even if not everybody takes an interest in them? I draw influence from the political philosophies of Rawls, Dworkin and Raz, as well as debates in aesthetics and social epistemology. 
   
• Tasnim Ismail: I am interested in phenomenology and personal identity.
   
• Dilara Küçük
   
• 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: 
   
• Harry Long
  
  
  I am particularly interested in metaphilosophy and formal epistemology. I’m currently looking into the threat that the reference class problem and Simpson’s paradox may pose for certain projects in philosophy that output hypotheses about tendencies. 
   
• Katie Lowe
  
  
  My interests include philosophy of language, mind and epistemology of testimony. Currently, I'm looking at different understandings of the uptake of speech acts. 
   
• Jelena Milosavljevic: 
• 
  I am interested in ancient theories of action and moral psychology, particularly those found in Aristotle's ethics. My MPhil research was 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: 
  
  
  My research focuses on Plato's theory of learning. Website: https://ucl.academia.edu/AlbaMiriello
   
• 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.
   
• Dylan Ngan
  
  
  (BA Philosophy, UCL) My research interests are on the philosophy of self and persons. My broader interests include metaphysics, identity, personhood, morality and Buddhism.
  
   
• Nadja Plein
  
  
  My main interest is in the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, particularly his work on language and freedom and how Gestalt theory underpins these ideas. (MA in Philosophy from Birkbeck; I have a background in painting and music, and a doctorate in music composition from the Royal College of Music, London.)
   
• Filippa Ronquist
  
  
  Hi, I'm Filippa. I'm primarily interested in moral, political, and legal philosophy. My thesis project is about practical authority. In it, I try to develop and defend the idea that authority relations are often justified by the fact that we sometimes have obligations towards other people that we cannot fulfil without their cooperation. Recently, I have been writing about normative powers, promising and social conventions. More generally, I'm interested in questions related to practical reason, justice, legitimacy, power (real and normative), coercion and freedom. I'll be spending the 2024-2025 academic year at UC Berkeley as a Sweden-America Foundation Fellow.
   
• Kenta Sekine:
• 
  I’m interested in topics in moral psychology, metaethics and political philosophy. My thesis explores the political dimensions (if any!) of the relations between norms, fault and hard feelings.
   
• Joseph Sibley
  
  
  I'm broadly interested in ancient philosophy, and more particularly in the ethics and moral psychology of Plato and Aristotle. I'm also interested in contemporary ethics and political philosophy.
   
• 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: 
  
  
  My research is in epistemology, moral philosophy, and Wittgenstein. My thesis explores Wittgenstein’s idea that thinking takes place against an ‘inherited background’, relating this idea to genealogical debunking, the epistemology of disagreement, and theories of personal autonomy.
   
• Haoyuan Wang
  
  
  (B.A., Philosophy, Fudan University, 2021）My main interests are ethics and political philosophy (especially equality and fairness). Previously I have worked on distributive justice, while I’m also interested in critical theory. 
   
• 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. 
   
• 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. 
   
• Fiona Whittingham: 
  
  
  My primary interest is in philosophy of mind, and interactions with ethics and metaphysics. I'm particularly interested in responsibility and autonomy, and pragmatism. Lately I've been thinking about the mechanisms and status of self-knowledge, and implications for moral psychology topics.