Research degrees in Philosophy
Our Department provides excellent support for its research students, many of whom gain valuable teaching experience and publish their research whilst studying with us. Research students are first given the opportunity to lead undergraduate seminars and some, towards the end of their PhD research, have given lecture courses on their area of study. For areas our staff would be particularly interested in supervising please visit our staff research profiles.
All students registered for a research degree are offered the opportunity to participate in an unrivalled programme of research training and skills development. The Department offers the following research degrees:
MPhil
Studying for an MPhil degree normally involves two years of full-time or four years of part-time directed study, at the end of which students produce a 60,000-word dissertation in their chosen area of research. Students registered for the MPhil may transfer to the PhD if their work is judged to be of suitable quality and promise.
PhD
The PhD course involves a minimum of two years full-time (four years part-time) directed research within the University, at the end of which the student will produce a dissertation in their chosen area of research of normally about 80,000 words.
To give you some idea of the range of subject matter that has been supervised at PhD level in the past, successful PhDs have had titles like:
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Mind-Bending: Probing the terra incognita between the physical and the phenomenal
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Private Worlds in Public Places
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The Subjectivity of Secondary Properties and Sensations
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Hume's Naturalism and Scepticism
Current areas in which dissertations are being written include aesthetics, philosophy of language, shared emotions in music, and philosophy of mind.
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