Philosophy at the University of Reading

A huge congratulations to our graduating students of 2026!

Congratulations to Tommaso Vittorio Soriani for his paper "Moral contingentism, personites and countermoral worlds" being published by Synthese! You can read the open access article here:

Moral contingentism, personites and countermoral worlds - Synthese According to Mark Johnston’s Personite Problem, Perdurantism—the view that persons are maximal fusions of person-stages—should be rejected, as it fails to account for the moral status of non-maximal fusions that overlap a person (personites). His Duplication Argument claims that personites hav...

In Celebrating inspiring women in our community, meet Dr Michela Bariselli.

Dr Michela has been awarded the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for her project ‘J.L. Austin’s notes for How to Do Things with Words: a case study for the performative approach to archival material’. Together with her Co-Investigator, Leo Townsend, she will begin the research in September 2026.

The project aims to develop a novel approach to the study of archival materials, such as drafts and notes. These materials are traditionally considered valuable only when they help explain a philosopher’s published work or can be edited for publication. This project challenges this view.

Using philosopher J.L. Austin’s notes for How to Do Things with Words as a case study, the project investigates their unpolished elements – such as cancellations and marginalia – as distinctive actions performed with words. The project’s hypothesis is that attending to these actions enriches the philosophical appreciation of the notes themselves, and of Austin’s contribution to philosophy.