Research output per year
Research output per year
Room 2.59, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building, Oxford Road
M13 9PL Manchester
In 2005, I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield, where my supervisors were Rosanna Keefe and Chris Hookway. Supported by an award from the Analysis Trust, I spent the 2005-6 academic year at the Faculty of Philosophy at Cambridge, continuing my research. I became a Lecturer at Manchester in 2006, and a Senior Lecturer in 2010.
I spent the 2009-10 academic year on research leave, thanks to an AHRC Research Leave award.
From 2011 to 2014, Chris Daly and I directed a research project entitled The Foundations of Ontology, funded by the AHRC.
I was an Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy from 2009 to 2016. From September 2021, Stacie Friend, Lee Walters, and I are the Editors of Analysis.
The philosophy of mathematics was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis and remains a major research interest of mine. In particular, I have defended nominalist accounts of mathematics: those which do not posit mathematical objects such as numbers or sets. Other ontological debates also interest me, particularly those concerning possible worlds, composite objects, and propositions. I have tended to explore theories which posit less rather than more, which has led me to think about paraphrase, pretence, fictionalism, and error theory. At present I am working on a book which brings some of these ideas into discussions of truth and paradox.
Other interests include philosophical method, grounding, and metaontology.
Publications
Links to published versions (PhilPapers)
Penultimate drafts of many of my papers are available on PhilPapers. If you have trouble getting hold of any of my papers, just email me.
I would be delighted to work with graduate students who share any of my research interests. Just drop me an email to discuss. Possible topics include: grounding, the indispensability argument, fictionalism, pretence theories, truth, analyticity, philosophical method, metaontology. For funding opportunities available to students wishing to do a PhD in any of these areas, please seehttp://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/philosophy/postgraduate-research/phd-funding/.
‘Alethic nihilism as an error theory’, Who is Afraid of Philosophy? 15th Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA), Alessandria, Italy, September 2023
‘Can inconsistent concepts be analysed?’, Concepts and Their Uses: Symposium of the Swiss Philosophical Society, Bern, Switzerland, August 2023
‘From alethic nihilism to inconsistency theory’, Death by Paradox? Inconsistency and Nihilism, University of Leeds, January 2022
'Quantification into predicate position and the metaphysics of properties', Language and World workshop, University of Graz, August 2019
'Semantic paradoxes of underdetermination', CLMPST2019: 16th International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Prague, August 2019
'An error theory of truth', University of Edinburgh, January 2019
'The phenomenological objection to hermeneutic fictionalism', Fictionalism, University of Hamburg, April 2018
'Is TRUTH primitive?', PhilLang2017, Łódź, May 2017
'Higher-order deflationism', Deflationism in Metaphysics, University of Vienna, December 2017
Co-Editor, Analysis
Sept 2021 → …
Editor, Analysis
Sept 2017 → Aug 2021
AHRC Peer Review College Member
Jan 2017 → Dec 2022
Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
Research output: Other contribution › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review