Doing Contemporary Philosophy

This module provides research training for students studying the MA in Philosophy. It aims to give students practice at developing key skills for academic research and for delivering and engaging with philosophical papers.This module has three components:

1. Attending talks by visiting speakers and writing short critiques of them 2. Participating in an internal graduate conference 3. A literature search

Students will be expected to attend talks by visiting speakers throughout the year (so about ten talks.) Part-time students for whom this is not possible may instead arrange to attend a philosophical conference. Students will write short critiques of the papers they attend (ie summary of argument plus discussion.) They will submit three 1,500 word critiques for assessment. This will give students practice at critically engaging with philosophical papers given in seminars.

In the summer term there will be an internal philosophy graduate conference. All students must attend and present a short paper based on their research. The aim of the conference is to give students experience of and practice in delivering philosophical papers. The MA conference will also include a discussion of publishing in philosophy. Students will also complete a literature search exercise.

By the end of this module students will:• have gained experience and developed skills in listening to and critiquing academic papers at the cutting edge of research in their field • had the opportunity to develop their presentation skills through giving a conference presentation of their work