PhD Philosophy - Philosophy Degree

Program Overview

This 3-year PhD program offers supervision in various philosophical fields, including continental philosophy and medical humanities. Students develop their doctoral thesis with extensive guidance through regular supervisory panels and are expected to contribute original research. Graduates have pursued successful careers in academia, law, and other fields, demonstrating the program's comprehensive training and impact.

Program Outline

Outline:

• The program offers supervision in a wide range of fields including: continental philosophy, history of philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical humanities.
• The program has an established international reputation and a strong tradition of postgraduate education, particularly in the specialist area of continental philosophy and - more recently - in the middle-ground between continental and analytic philosophy.
• Moral and political philosophy is another notable area of research concentration.
• The program is also very active in the emerging field of medical humanities.
• Duration: typically 3 years
• The program also offers an MPhil and Masters by dissertation.
• Part-time research study is also available.

Assessment:

• Within the School of Philosophy and Art History, students invest time mainly working on their thesis with the help of the PGR Supervisor
• Twice a year, students have a supervisory panel meeting, which provides a formal opportunity to discuss progress with both the student's supervisor and another member of the faculty.
• During their first Supervisory Panel in January, new PGR students are required to submit material in a specific form: a 5,000-word Critical Literature Review (i.e.
an evaluative account of a selection from the most relevant scholarly literature in their area of research), and a 2,000-word detailed Project Outline.
• At subsequent Supervisory Panels students are expected to submit draft chapters of their thesis totaling no more than 10,000 words in length.
• PhD students are also required to present their work to the Departmental Research Colloquium at least once in the student's PGR career.
• Examiners look for evidence of training in the appropriate methods, for knowledge of relevant literature concerning the topic in question, and for general competence in background related to the topic.
• In the case of a PhD thesis, in particular, examiners look for evidence of originality.
• A doctoral thesis must show evidence of being a significant contribution to knowledge and of the capacity of the candidate to pursue further research without supervision.
• The maximum length for a PhD thesis, whether by research or as part of the Integrated PhD, is 80,000 words; for the MPhil it is 50,000 words; and for the MA by Dissertation it is 30,000 words.
• Philosophers with a PhD from Essex now teach at many UK universities, including Warwick, Oxford, Sussex, Reading, Bolton, Manchester Metropolitan, and Keele, and also at numerous institutions abroad (such as University College Dublin, the University of Malta, and Grand Valley State University, USA).
• Our other Philosophy graduates have gone into careers in law, the media, local administration, HM Revenue and Customs, and top jobs in the Civil Service.

Other:

• The School is also home to both the Essex Autonomy Project and the Ethics of Powerlessness, major interdisciplinary projects funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), which aim to investigate the role of autonomous judgement and conditions of powerlessness in many aspects of human life.
• Some recent projects and publications include:
• Timo Jütten's major new Leverhulme-funded research project, Competition and Competitiveness
• Irene McMullin's Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues (Cambridge, 2018)
• Steve Gormley's Deliberative Theory and Deconstruction: A Democratic Venture (Edinburgh, 2020)

Home/UK fee £4,786 per year International fee £18,750 per year Fees will increase for each academic year of study.