Department of Philosophy, King's College London

Department of Philosophy,
King's College London
	King's College buildings on Surrey Street
Established	1906 - Department of Philosophy and Psychology; 1912 - Department of Philosophy;
Parent institution	Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London
Head of Department	Maria Alvarez
Academic staff	40
Students	450
Location	Surrey Street, Westminster, London, United Kingdom
Website	Department of Philosophy

The Department of Philosophy is an academic division in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King's College London. It is one of the largest and most distinguished centres for the study of philosophy in the United Kingdom.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]

History

For over half a century since the Anglican foundation of King's College in 1829, the study of philosophy was restricted to courses within the Department of Theology and the Department of English Literature. In 1906 a separate Department of Philosophy and Psychology was explicitly established, and in 1912 Philosophy split to form its own department.^[6]^[7]

The department is located in the Philosophy Building on Surrey Street, a set of three adjacent townhouses joined through a series of corridors and forming part of the Strand Campus of King's College.^[8]^[9] The vaults along the back of the building are those containing the old Roman Baths on Strand Lane.^[10]^[11]

In 1989, Sir Richard Sorabji founded the King's College Centre for Philosophical Studies at the department with the aim of promoting philosophy to the wider public.^[12]^[13]^[14]

The Head of Department is currently Maria Alvarez Professor of Philosophy at King's.^[15]^[16]

Traditions

The Department of Philosophy owns a historic bar on its premises in Surrey Street, officially the King's College Sports & Social Club Bar but referred to informally as simply the Philosophy Bar. Management of the bar was taken over by the King's College London Students' Union in 2016.^[17] However, the bar was closed in 2020 in response to COVID-19 restrictions, and despite a petition to KCL and the KCLSU which received 680 signatures, the bar remains closed. ^[18]

Academic staff and students of the department also make an annual trip to Cumberland Lodge, a Grade II listed country house in Windsor Great Park.^[19] There is a programme of lectures, communal meals and other activities, including an annual football match played between staff and students.^[20]

Student life in the department is administered mainly by the King's College London Philosophy Society.^[21]

Rankings

The Department of Philosophy at King's ranks highly in both national and global rankings.^[22]^[5]^[23]

The Philosophical Gourmet Report lists the department at 4th in the UK and 26th in the English-speaking world.^[24]

QS World University Rankings places the department at 4th in the UK and 9th globally in 2021.^[25]

Current faculty

Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
Adrian Alsmith, Lecturer in Philosophy (Mind and Psychology)
Maria Alvarez, Professor of Philosophy
Joachim Aufderheide, Lecturer in Philosophy
Bill Brewer, Susan Stebbing Professor of Philosophy
John Callanan, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Rachel Cristy, Lecturer in Philosophy
Julien Dutant, Lecturer in Philosophy
Sarah Fine, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Alexander Franklin, Lecturer in Philosophy of Science
David Galloway, Lecturer in Philosophy
Sacha Golob, Reader in Philosophy
Elselijn Kingma, Peter Sowerby Professor of Philosophy and Medicine
Eleanor Knox, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Jessica Leech, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Clayton Littlejohn, Professor of Philosophy
Matteo Mameli, Reader in Philosophy
Eliot Michaelson, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Carlo Nicolai, Lecturer in Philosophy
David Owens, Professor of Philosophy
David Papineau, Professor of Philosophy of Science
Thomas Pink, Professor of Philosophy
Will Rasmussen, Matilal Lecturer in Indian philosophy
Jasper Reid, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Andrea Sangiovanni, Professor of Philosophy
Matthew Soteriou, Chair in Philosophy of Mind
James Stazicker, Lecturer in Philosophy
Mark Textor, Professor of Philosophy
Shaul Tor, Senior Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy
Raphael Woolf, Professor of Philosophy

Emeritus faculty

Dov Gabbay, Augustus De Morgan Professor Emeritus of Logic
Raimond Gaita, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy
Jim Hopkins, Reader Emeritus in Philosophy
Ruth Kempson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics
Shalom Lappin, Emeritus Professor of Computational Linguistics
Mary Margaret McCabe, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy
Wilfried Meyer-Viol, Emeritus Lecturer in Computational Linguistics
John Milton, Emeritus Professor of the History of Philosophy
David-Hillel Ruben, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Anthony Savile, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Gabriel Segal, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Sir Richard Sorabji CBE FBA FKC, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and founder of the King's College Centre for Philosophical Studies
Charles Travis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy