📈 The National Student Survey 2026 results are in and we're delighted to have maintained our consistently strong performance. This year, we're in the Top 5 UK Philosophy departments for positive responses!

🌐 We've updated our website! The latest information about our research, teaching, and events - plus some bonus photos of us in the beautiful Cairngorms - can be found here:

Philosophy | The School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History | The University of Aberdeen

Philosophy

abdn.ac.uk

🤖 📚️ "In our view, AI literacy belongs within existing digital literacy requirements [...] The window for acting before the habit becomes the norm is not large." -- Prof Jesper Kallestrup, research student Sriram Raghavan, and UoG's Adam Carter.

Give our children a licence to think: What AI literacy should look like

WE DO not let teenagers drive without a licence. Even though many can drive a car, driving is consequential enough to require structured preparation: knowledge of risks, demonstration of competence…

businesstimes.com.sg

📖 'Rethinking Healthcare Improvement' by Vikki Entwistle, Alan Cribb & Polly Mitchell, is now out (and available as a free ebook, with thanks to the Wellcome Trust)! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/rethinkin...

Rethinking Healthcare Improvement

What is 'good' healthcare? Can we define and deliver it, or will we simply make things better for some people and worse for others? Bringing together the fields…

bloomsbury.com

🎓 Congratulations to all UoA Philosophers graduating this afternoon! To share a testimonial about your experience that could feature in UoA news pieces and possibly the local press, click here: app.geckoform.com/public/#/mod...

💬 Our Jesper Kallestrup is speaking at this workshop on Trust, Trustworthiness and AI at the University of Sheffield later this week.

💬 Our Eilidh Beaton will deliver a talk on attention and political philosophy at this workshop on The Ethics of Immigrant Selection at the University of Reading next week.

The Ethics of Immigrant Selection Workshop

The Ethics of Immigrant Selection workshop Date: 22nd June, 2026 from 10:00 to 18:00 Location: London Road L22 G06 University of Reading, Reading Details: While the normative literature on migration…

philevents.org

🚨 New co-authored publication from our PhD student Frank Burr & Prof Mike Beaney now out in Religions. 🗞️ Paper title: In the Beginning Was the Redeeming Word: Tolstoy’s Spiritual Influence on the Genesis of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Available open access here:

🗓️ All are welcome to attend our upcoming workshop, Migration and Asylum in Scotland: A Philosophical Perspective, 11.30am-5.30pm in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. If you plan to join for any part of the event, please inform eilidh.beaton@abdn.ac.uk for catering purposes.

💬 Earlier this week, Prof Mike Beaney gave a lecture on ‘Chinese Graphic Logic’ at the International Colloquium on the History of Logic (Interlog Network) at Campus Condorcet in Paris.

💬 Our Jesper Kallestrup is delivering a keynote at this workshop in Rotterdam this week.

A transcript of Prof Mike Beaney's recent interview in Fudan, 'Beyond the Binary: Analytic Philosophy Meets the Chinese Tradition' is now available both Chinese and English. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/YGFdAn9Nt6...

📕 💬 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology are hosting a book workshop on UoA Prof. Mike Beaney's "The Joy of Chinese Philosophy" today. Further information here:

Book Symposium on Michael Beaney’s “The Joy of Chinese Philosophy”

AbstractThe activity is a one-day book symposium on Prof. Michael Beaney’s recently published (2026) research monograph on early Chinese philosophy, called “The Joy of Chinese Philosophy”. The aim of…

calendar.hkust.edu.hk

🔎 A concise summary of @eilidhbeaton.bsky.social's latest piece can now be found in New Work in Philosophy! newworkinphilosophy.substack.com/p/methodolog...

"Methodological Nationalism is Not the (Best Articulation of the) Problem" - Eilidh Beaton (University of Aberdeen)

Philosophy, 2026

newworkinphilosophy.substack.com

Aberdeen Philosophy@abdnphilosophy.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🗞️ Our Eilidh Beaton's latest paper, 'Methodological Nationalism is Not the (best articulation of the) Problem' is now out in Philosophy. The paper raises worries for calls to outright reject methodological nationalism - i.e. nation-state-centric ways of seeing.

Our Ulrich Stegmann's chapter in the forthcoming collection, Images of the Plant Humanities, discusses the history of plant morphology - specifically the 18th century insight that different-looking floral organs (like petals and stamens) are actually 'the same' organ. www.abdn.ac.uk/people/u.ste...

🗞️ Our Eilidh Beaton's latest paper, 'Methodological Nationalism is Not the (best articulation of the) Problem' is now out in Philosophy. The paper raises worries for calls to outright reject methodological nationalism - i.e. nation-state-centric ways of seeing.

Methodological Nationalism is Not the (Best Articulation of the) Problem | Philosophy | Cambridge Core

Methodological Nationalism is Not the (Best Articulation of the) Problem - Volume 100 Issue 3

cambridge.org

💬 Our Mike Beaney will be delivering the GRIPh annual lecture at the GRoningen Institute of Philosophy this evening. He'll be speaking about his recent book, "The Joy of Chinese Philosophy".

The Joy of Chinese Philosophy

Michael Beaney will discuss how Chinese philosophy helps us to uncover and interrogate some of the most basic assumptions of Western philosophy.

sggroningen.nl

We welcome expressions of interest in the 2026 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme. Our internal triage deadline is 8th June 2026. Interested candidates should reach out to their prospective mentor & sabine.freitag@abdn.ac.uk ahead of this deadline. Info ➡️ www.abdn.ac.uk/dhpa/fellows...

🗓️ Reminder: THIS WEEK!

⛰️ Last weekend Philosophy students and staff visited Ballater for the annual Reading Party. The weekend included walking the Seven Bridges and Sgor Buidhe, talks by students and staff and the (in)famous philosophy quiz. #PhilosophyMatters

📖 Join us this Thursday 19th March for a public lecture by Michael Beaney celebrating the publication of his new book, The Joy of Chinese Philosophy. The event is open to all. Register here: www.ticketsource.co.uk/confucius-in...

💬 Last week, our Stephan Torre presented this (fabulously-titled) paper at the Geneva Linguistics & Metaphysics of Time Workshop. www.unige.ch/lettres/phil...

🤖 💭 Check out this workshop on AI Epistemics taking place at the Onassis Library in Athens, co-organised by our Jesper Kallestrup via his Digital Knowledge Project.

💬 🇳🇴 Our Eilidh Beaton is in Oslo today giving a talk in the Dynamic Territory seminar series. She'll be presenting her work on methodological nationalism, forthcoming in "Philosophy".

DynamiTE Seminar: Eilidh Beaton (University of Aberdeen) - Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas

Methodological Nationalism is Not the (best articulation of the) Problem

hf.uio.no

🗓️ Save the date! Our Jesper Kallestrup is hosting a workshop on the Ethics & Epistemology of AI on Friday 27th March. Contact jesper.kallestrup@abdn.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.

🎓 Postgraduate Fair | Tomorrow! 📍 Elphinstone Hall | ⏰ 11am–6pm We’re looking forward to welcoming prospective and current students and alumni. Didn’t register? No problem — registration is still open, or just come along. Full itinerary & register: bit.ly/4jRNPD9

📣 Aberdeen Philosophy students: The ABDN Shadowing Scheme is now open for applications. This is an opportunity to engage in one day of work experience in the public sector, law, or real estate. Deadline 19 Feb, more info here: www.abdn.ac.uk/careers/expe...

📖 Check out our Beth Lord's chapter, "Spinoza and the Galenic Idea of the Human Body", in this new OUP edited collection, Spinoza on the Human Perspective.

💭 Our Jesper Kallestrup is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Glasgow this semester. He'll be working in the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre on the ERC-funded KNOW-HOW Project, led by Adam Carter. More info on the project here:

Know How Research | epistemology

KNOW-HOW is a major research project funded by the European Research Council which develops a comprehensive framework for understanding know-how and its place in a wider web of concepts we rely on to…

knowhow-research.com

🗓️ Save the date! Our Aberdeen Philosophy PGRs are hosting a conference on "Imagination, Fiction, and Extended Reality" this time next week in the Duncan Rice Library. Talks are open to all.