Prof Helen Beebee

Samuel Hall Professor of Philisophy

Affiliations:

Philosophy, School of Social Sciences

Links:

David Lewis Project: The Age of Metaphysical Revolution

Email:

helen.beebee@manchester.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0) 161 275 1755

Full contact details

ORCID: 0000-0001-7650-3622

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Biography

I studied at Warwick (BA), Liverpool (MA) and King's College London (PhD). Before coming to Manchester for the second time in 2012, I was a temporary lecturer at Edinburgh (1994-5), St. Andrews (1995-6) and UCL (1996-7), a postdoc at the Australian National University (1997-9), a lecturer/senior lecturer at Manchester (1999-2005), and then a professor at Birmingham (2005-12), where I did stints as Head of Department (2005-8) and Head of School (2011-12).

From September 2016 to August 2019, I'm the Principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project, 'The age of metaphysical revolution: David Lewis and his place in the history of analytic philosophy', with my new colleauges at Manchester Fraser MacBride, Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Anthony Fisher.

Read more about the project

I've been involved in various other research projects, including a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2008-10) and a large AHRC project ('Metaphysics of Science', 2006-9), on which I was a co-investigator along with Alexander Bird (Bristol, PI) and Stephen Mumford (Nottingham). More recently, I was co-applicant on a successful application to the Royal Society/British Academy for a Newton International Fellowship with Anthony Fisher, who spent two years at Manchester working on Samuel Alexander. (The University of Manchester hosts Alexander's unpublished correspondence and papers.

Visit our Alexander-related website

I am one of the co-editors of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and an associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association; I'm also on the editorial boards of Hume Studies and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

I'm currently President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and President Elect of the Aristotelian Society, and co-chair (with Jenny Saul) of the BPA/Society for Women in Philosophy (UK) Committee for Women in Philosophy. I was Director of the British Philosophical Assocation from 2007 to 2011 and a member of the AHRC's Advisory Board from 2009 to 2013.

Further information

Radio

In Our Time, on free will, with Simon Blackburn and Galen Strawson
In Our Time, on Hume, with James Harris and Peter Millican
The Philosopher's Zone, also on Hume, on Australia's Radio National (click on 'Download audio')
The Philosopher's Arms, on the problem of induction, on Radio 4

I have an interest in the under-representation of women in philosophy (women make up about 25% of permanent academic staff in the UK). Jenny Saul and I wrote a report on behalf of the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy UK in 2011, which you can read here; the BPA and SWIP (UK) also launched a 'Good Practice Scheme', aimed at encouraging UK philosophy departments and learned societies to reflect and improve on their inclusiveness, in 2013.

I have a paper, 'Women and deviance in philosophy', in a collection edited by Katrina Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins (Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?, OUP 2013).

I also have a short post on Lisa Bortolotti's Imperfect Cognitions blog here, and a guest post for The Conversation here. I also feature in a Guardian article on the same topic, which you can read here.

Finally, I'm on Melbourne's 3CR community radio being interviewed about women in philosophy, here (it lasts half an hour). I've also briefly appeared a couple of times on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 (once with Angie Hobbs and once with Jenny Saul) on the same topic.