Royal Holloway, University of London

Faculty Member, Classics and Philosophy

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy

About

After dropping out of Manchester University and living in Turkey for a year I graduated with a first class honours degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds, for which I was awarded an IEEE prize (though I’m still not sure what for). Having become an enthusiast for all things Russian (well, from Pushkin to Schnittke) I then went off to the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at Birmingham University to (re)train as a Kremlinologist; but the thought of having to spend years in the Moscow archives convinced me not to pursue that particular career path, so I decided to avoid the cockroaches and went off to seek my fortune in the City… Sadly, no fortune was forthcoming so after a very brief spell at Oxford contemplating a DPhil on neural networks I found myself in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, initially writing about a Russian mystic with a fondness for cosmic vacuum cleaners and whom everyone seemed to think I’d invented (Николай Фёдорович Фёдоров), but going on to complete an MPhil dissertation on Surrealism and Psychoanalysis and a PhD on Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy. My first job was at (what is now called) Anglia Ruskin University. In 2008 I arrived at Royal Holloway to help develop philosophy in the College. My primary interest is in metaphilosophy, which has led to work on scepticism, pragmatism and - most recently - tacit knowledge. Although I have never owned a wolf, I am proud of my aquatic contribution to the biodiversity of East London...

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