It was a great pleasure to be the external for Lilian Kroth’s PhD examination at Cambridge University last month. Lilian wrote a really fine thesis entitled Michel Serres’s Philosophy of Limits. Passages between the Philosophy of Science and Critical Theory. Lilian’s work is always worth reading, and here’s an example: Lilian Kroth, ‘Entropy’s Critical Translations: Following Serres’s Path through the North-West-Passage’, Technophany Vol 2(2), 2023. https://doi.org/10.54195/technophany.14313.

We’re a little late with this news but congratulations to Stuart Blaney, who was awarded his PhD last year for a thesis entitled Practices of Equality and Freedom: Rancière and Foucault. Stuart’s examiners were Joseph Tanke (University of Hawaii) and Patrick O’Connor. .

Here’s an interview with Patrick O’Connor about his latest book, Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

As most of our students and postgraduate researchers work with us online our Visiting Speaker program is also held online. Our guests share work in advance, which is then discussed at live events. The events are recorded for those students unable to attend at the time. Recent speakers include:

Ulrich Haase (Manchester Metropolitan University) Heidegger and Nietzsche – Phenomenology and Ontology

Katrina Mitcheson (University of the West of England) Pregnancy as a Metaphor of Self-Cultivation in Nietzsche’s Dawn

Michael Granado (Staffordshire University)  Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Time

William Watkin (Brunel University), On Bioviolence

Joost van Loon (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Historical Materialism and Actor Network Theory.

Niki Young (University of Malta) Only Two Peas in a Pod: On the Overcoming of Ontological Taxonomies

On 11th December 2023 I’ll be speaking as part of a launch event for The Vattimo Dictionary, ed. Simonetta Moro (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), a guide to and celebration of the work of the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Full details of the launch and how to join are here. (David Webb)

Dave Monroe, who’s working on Serres for his PhD, and I had a great time at TU Dresden at this outstanding conference on Michel Serres and the Environmental Humanities. Thanks to Moritz Ingwersen and Beate Ochsner for organising this event. (David Webb).

David Webb presented a paper at the conference Michel Serres: Thinking Beyond Boundaries, held at the Maison française d’Oxford in June 2022.

Patrick O’Connor in conversation with David Webb about Michel Serres – a good way to find out a little about what makes his work so interesting and so important today.

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-n8a9z-12643ae

You can view a collection of other excellent talks on the work of Michel Serres from the same event here.

Videos of a collection of excellent talks on Michel Serres are available here.