Welcome!

Welcome to the Centre for Engaged Philosophy at the University of Sheffield!

The Centre for Engaged Philosophy brings together scholars and practitioners dedicated to philosophical practices that aim to inform, learn from, and build, ongoing collaborative relationships of import beyond the academy. 

This work is timely: our contemporary world is beset by complex problems. While philosophers were once deeply involved in addressing public affairs and social issues of their day, there is a tendency now to think of philosophy as an exercise in isolated reflection that abstracts away from real-world complexities. The Centre for Engaged Philosophy aims to engage philosophy deeply in the problems of our time, wrestling with the question of how careful thought might help to build a better future.

News

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Programme: White Rose Practical Philosophy meeting, Dec 18th.

The next iteration of the White Rose Practical Philosophy meeting will take place at Sheffield on 18th December, with colleagues and students from York and Leeds joining us. There will be four talks in the morning on Responsibility Practices from Sheffield Philosophy faculty, and eight afternoon talks from White Rose PGRs and ECRs.  The full …

Continue reading “Programme: White Rose Practical Philosophy meeting, Dec 18th.”

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CFA: White Rose Practical Philosophy Network, University of Sheffield, 18th December 2025.

Abstracts are solicited in particular from MA, PhD students, and Early Career Researchers in Philosophy. The University of Sheffield will host the next meeting of the White Rose Practical Philosophy Network on 18 December. As per the highly successful inaugural meeting of the network in June, which brought together researchers from Leeds, Sheffield, and York, …

Continue reading “CFA: White Rose Practical Philosophy Network, University of Sheffield, 18th December 2025.”

Events

2025

  • Annual MAP lecture, 16th May:
    Adam Hosein     – Northeastern University: Religious Freedom, Social Status, and Fairness: Why Power and Privilege Matter When Assessing Religious Accommodations

2024

  • Living Streets Reading Group
    • 29th January 2024 – online
    • 26th February 2024 – in-person
    • 7th March 2024 – Living Streets Summit
    • 22nd April 2024 – in-person
    • 29th April 2024 – book club
    • 20th May 2024 – in-person
    • 24th June 2024 – in-person (social)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Peter Finocchiaro & Timothy Perrine (2023) Linguistic justice in academic philosophy: the rise of English and the unjust distribution of epistemic goods, Philosophical Psychology (05/02/2024)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Will Fraker, Social kind generics and the dichotomizing perspective (19/02/2024)
  • Women in the History of Philosophy Lecture Series – ‘Susan Stebbing’s Philosophy of Physics’, Professor Frederique Janssen-Lauret (01/03/2024)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Joe Vitriol, Change in attitudes and beliefs about implicit bias education: a demonstration among members of a police department (15/04/2024)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Uwe Peters, The philosophical debate on linguistic bias: A critical perspective (22/04/2024)
  • Minorities and Philosophy Lecture Series – ‘Taking African Ontologies Seriously’, Professor Patrice Haynes (26/04/2024)
  • The Philosophy of Disability and Difference Lecture Series – Professor Zsuzsanna Chappel (03/05/2024)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Kasper Lippert-Rassmussen, What is the folk concept of discrimination? Discriminators and comparators (13/05/2024)
  • Caring for everyone: Developing gender-inclusive language materials (in person workshop) (23/05/2024)
  • Understanding Bias: Implicit Bias Reading Group, Special Issue – Chamberlain, J., Holroyd, J., Jenkins, B., & Scaife, R. (2023). Implicit bias, intersectionality, compositionality (17/06/2024)
  • Caring for everyone: Developing gender-inclusive language materials (online workshop) (24/06/2024)

  • Prison Voices Conference (This will be the culmination of the Prison Voices project, which is led by Jim Chamberlain, Antony Duff, and MM McCabe and embedded in the educational work of the charity Philosophy in Prison) (05/11/2024)

2023

2022

2021

“Thinking in Action: Engaging Philosophy” is an event series by the CEP, with the aim to do exactly that: put thinking in action. In a series of events, organized by postgraduate students, we want to explore philosophical themes, paths and arenas that will engage topics and speakers both in and outside academia. It is our goal to introduce and discuss a range of philosophically engaging topics that will help students think critically about how their philosophical skills will be applicable and crucial in their lives after, or outside of, the academy. This should in particular help undergraduate, but also postgraduate students and the wider public, to think about philosophy in non-traditional ways and outside the ivory tower. This series is supported by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities.

Thinking in Action: Engaging Philosophy events:

Other lectures:

2020

2019

2018

Further information about past philosophy events at Sheffield can be found on the departmental web page.

Members

Core Members

Chris Bennett

Chris’s research includes work on criminal justice, punishment and alternatives to punishment; as well as topics in moral psychology, such as moral emotions, blame and forgiveness.
Megan Blomfield

Megan’s research concerns global justice and the environment, focusing on the ethical and political dimensions of climate change.
T. Ryan Byerly

Ryan’s current research includes work on the character trait of others-centredness, the virtues of the intellectually dependable person, and the collective character traits of religious congregations
Jim Chamberlain

Jim’s research includes work on metaethics, moral psychology, and philosophical issues arising from doing philosophy in prison. On behalf of the University of Sheffield and the charity Philosophy in Prison, Jim has led 31 philosophy sessions in two Category B prisons. He is interested in how we might learn from the philosophical insights of marginalised people, including those in prison.
Delphine Choquel

Delphine is developing a phenomenological approach to animal ethics, drawing on the work of Levinas and Løgstrup. Rather than using capacities such as sentience to determine which animals should be included within a moral framework, she offers a Levinasian understanding of ethics opened up by our proximity to a vulnerable Other who places a demand upon us. Delphine’s interests include animal ethics, phenomenology, Hegel, normative ethics and animal cognition. 
Onyx Crisp

Onyx is a WRoCAH funded PhD student working in philosophy of sex and queer theory, with a focus on asexuality. Her research focuses on bringing asexual theory into dialogue with philosophy of sex by asking what epistemologies inform discussions around sexual orientation and what is missing from these conversations. Her method is to establish an asexual epistemology to assess the
knowledge gap between asexual theory and philosophy of sex. She is interested in how reframing these epistemologies may impact research areas beyond philosophy.
Ben Davies

Ben works on the ethics and politics of health. Past and current projects include discrimination in resource allocation, the role of responsibility in medicine, and how democratic our health care system should be. He is also interested in animal ethics. 
Josh Forstenzer
Co-Director

Josh’s research focuses on the value of democratic deliberative norms and practices. His most recent research pays special attention to the democratic value of higher education.
Max Khan Hayward

Max works on ethics, metaethics and moral psychology. At the moment he is particularly interested in co-operation, trust, and empathy, and the way that these shape the political domain.
Joseph Holmes

 Joseph is a PhD student working in political philosophy, primarily on territory. He is particularly interested in the nature and value of collective self-determination, attempting to explain how states can embody their citizenry’s collective will and why this is necessary for territorial rights.
Jules Holroyd
Co-Director

Jules’ research focuses on ways that our cognitions are influenced by, and complicit in, injustices that track social identity, such as gender and race. Their recent work has focused on implicit bias, inclusive language, and oppressive praise.
Nan Li

Nan is a PhD student whose work focuses on theories of climate justice, with particular attention to questions concerning their feasibility and practical implementation. He is funded by the Sheffield – China Scholarships Council PhD Scholarship programme.
Hallvard Lillehammer

Hallvard studies the interpretation and criticism of contested ideas in moral and political thought, such as ‘reason’, ‘objectivity’, ‘autonomy’, ‘impartiality’, ‘indifference’ and ‘responsibility’. He is particularly interested
 how these categories apply to institutions such as government or healthcare.
Chong-Ming Lim 

CM’s research focuses on ethics and political philosophy. He is currently focusing on political resistance and public commemorations. He has also written on topics in disability and medical ethics. 
Eric Olson

Eric has written on the possibility of life after death, what makes it bad to die, and the metaphysics of transhumanism and artificial intelligence.
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

Komarine works in phenomenology. She has two current research projects: one is on the nature of habit, which she is exploring in clinical settings; the other is concerned with issues of power and communication between different cultures.
Yonatan Shemmer

Yonatan’s research includes work on what trustworthiness requires in discretionary circumstances, i.e., circumstances in which what one has been entrusted with was not well defined, and on whether re-understanding the nature of disagreement would affect our approach to conflict resolution.
Yonatan is also the co-coordinator of Philosophy in the Showroom.
Minna Shkul

Minna’s work is interdisciplinary and informed by social sciences, as she examines identity and prejudice, particularly in the areas of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. She is especially interested in ethnography, lived religions and analysis of real life questions that matter to feminists, LGBTQ communities and ethnic minorities.
Anne Thompson

Anne is a PhD student working on a WRoCAH Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Peak District National Park authority. She works in environmental aesthetics; her current research focuses on aesthetic character of landscape and landscape change, aiming to develop a theoretical framework to monitor and communicate landscape change.
Nikhil Venkatesh

Nikhil’s research focuses on utilitarianism and socialism, aiming to bring the two traditions
together in a way that sheds light on contemporary social issues and fundamental ethical
questions.

Affiliated Members

Ed Armitage

Ed is mainly interested in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His research is focused on giving a philosophical account of worry, specifically in terms of the extent to which it can be rational or irrational, and the implications this may have for our understanding of mental action and agency. 
Lijiaozi Cheng 

Lijiaozi looks at concepts and experiences of health, disease and “sub-health”, the grey area between disease and health. She combines conceptual analysis with ethnographic research, in exploring how sub-health is being made sense of.








Matthew Cull

Matthew is an Interdisciplinary Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society, University of Edinburgh. They are working on the contemporary crisis in trans healthcare and politics in the UK, and recently published a book on the metaphysics of gender with Bloomsbury, What Gender Should Be.
Jane Gatley

Jane works in philosophy of education. She is interested in the aims of education, the curriculum and the place of philosophy in schools. She is also interested in the nature and value of philosophy. Her thesis presents an argument for teaching philosophy in schools.
Isela González Vázquez

Isela works on Feminism, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Biology. Their PhD focuses on the role of values in science, with a particular focus on biological accounts of sexual orientation.









Richard Hassall

Richard’s research is on the effects that psychiatric diagnoses have on their recipients. Specifically, this concerns the manner in which such medicalised diagnoses impact on an individual’s self-narrative and how this may lead to experiences of epistemic injustice
Angie Hobbs

Angie is Professor Emerita of the Public Understanding of Philosophy. She focuses on ethics, political theory and ancient philosophy, appearing in the media to discuss issues like democracy, refugees and philosophy in schools. She regularly works with HM Government, the NHS, and the World Economic Forum, and is on the Advisory Board of Plato’s Academy Centre.
Jingbo Hu

Jingbo Hu is a postdoctoral researcher at Fudan University, China. He has recently published work on reasons-responsive conceptions of responsibility in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.
Tareeq Jalloh

Tareeq’s main research interests are in the philosophy of rap, social philosophy and applied philosophy. His thesis explores the fairness of popular and pervasive critiques of rap music. 
Charlotte Flores

Charlotte currently works as a political researcher at Bryant Research. Her work has focused on ethical and socio-political dimensions of meat consumption, and moral harm and injury, worker alienation, speciesism, and institutional change within oppressive and unjust systems. She has interests in race equality and decolonization, criminal justice, and agricultural systems.
Anna Klieber

Anna is interested in political and feminist philosophy of language. Their research mainly focuses on conversational silence and trans issues surrounding speech. They are also interested in social and political epistemology and philosophy of language more generally. They are currently a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff
Will Morgan

Will is currently a Research Associate at Bristol on the project ‘MetaScience’, which asks ‘what (if anything) unifies the sciences?’ Most of Will’s research is at the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of biology, looking at questions such as ‘What is an organism?’, ‘What is a human person?’ and ‘What is death?’.


Maria Pietrini Sanchez

Maria is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Philosophical Research at UNAM. Maria’s current research focuses on issues related to procreative ethics, in particular examining the normative meaning of procreation in the context of reproductive technologies and surrogacy.
Barney Riggs

Barney works on the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He is concerned with developing an account of Kierkegaard’s concept of busyness, as both a personal-religious and a socio-political critique.
Henry Roe

Henry is interested in epistemic vice and, in particular, arrogance. His thesis will explore how arrogance manifests in groups and the varieties of harm this supports.
Jenny Saul

Jenny’s current research is mainly in two areas: ways to improve workplaces (especially academia) to make them more welcoming for members of marginalised groups; and the pragmatics of sexism and racism in political speech.


Carien Smith

Carien works on the social epistemology and ethics of climate change. Her current focus is especially on the intersection between the ethics and epistemology of climate change conspiracy theories. Her other research interests include meaning in life and the apocalypse.
Rosa Vince

Rosa’s main research interests are in feminism and philosophy of sex. Their thesis argues that objectificaiton is not necessarily harmful, and that pornography is not uniquely or distinctly harmful insofar as it objectifies. Rosa is currently interested in the way our work impacts the world and the pernicious side-effects feminist research can have.
Sabina R. Wantoch

Sabina’s research is about anomalous experiences (voices/ visions, often described as hallucinations) and how the way that they are framed may affect the very experiences themselves. Their research weaves together work in phenomenology with critical psychiatry and the contemporary mad movement.  
Elliott Woodhouse

Elliott studies the ethics and global justice of climate geo-engineering. He is particularly interested in human/nature dichotomy and the role it plays in thinking about our responsibilities in a time of catastrophic climate change

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