Department News

Welcome back

I am delighted to welcome back the philosophical community for a new and exciting year. I am also pleased to be able to convey several pieces of good news.

It is a pleasure to announce the recruitment of two new assistant professors, Timothy Clarke and Wesley Holliday. Professor Clarke joins us from Yale, where he recently completed his Ph.D. in ancient philosophy. Professor Holliday comes to us from Stanford, where he earned his Ph.D. in epistemology and philosophical logic.

In addition, I am delighted to announce that we have been able to retain Professor Alva Noë from CUNY’s attempt to recruit him away from us. Professor Noë is now back full time with our department. We were also successful in being given a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Alex Madva, who joins us from Columbia University. His Ph.D. is at the intersection of ethics and epistemology. Dr. Madva will teach two courses a year both in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014.

The department offerings will also be strengthened by Katharina Kaiser and Tim Crockett. Kaiser will offer courses in the area of post-Kantian continental philosophy and Professor Crockett will offer courses on Spinoza and Locke/Leibniz. In the Spring, Professor Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) will be visiting the department and adding to our strengths and offerings by teaching courses on Hegel and on epistemology.

Graduate students in our department had a terrific year on the job market in 2011-2012, despite the challenging conditions that continue to prevail. Seven of them have accepted attractive tenure-track or continuing positions, and another four have taken taken very good postdocs or visiting jobs; here are the complete results:

Joseph Barnes, UC Berkeley (1-year lectureship)

Brian Berkey, Melbourne University (2-year post-doc)

Vanessa de Harven, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

Andy Engen, Illinois Wesleyan University

James Genone, Franklin and Marshall College (2-year visiting position)

Markus Kohl, University of Tennessee

Tamar Lando, Columbia University

Julia Nefsky, University of Toronto

Matthew Parrott, Oxford University (2-year Mellon postdoc)

James Stazicker, University of Reading

George Tsai, University of Hawaii, Manoa

We will miss these philosophers in Moses Hall, but offer them our warm congratulations and our very best wishes for continuing success in their careers.

It is always a pleasure at this time of year to welcome to our community a new group of students. This year five students will be starting their graduate work in our Department: Michael Diaz (Claremont-McKenna), Alex Hansen (U. Colorado), Jackson Kernion (Harvard), Antonia Peacocke (Harvard), Rachel Rudolph (McGill). In addition, three new students will be starting in the Logic and Methodology Program: Russell Buehler (Carleton), Matthew Harrison-Trainor (U. Waterloo), and Alex Kocurek (Notre Dame). We wish them every success in their graduate studies and beyond.

The Berkeley Philosophy Department regularly attracts a large group of visiting scholars from around the world, who join us for shorter or longer periods, and contribute substantially to making ours a more cosmopolitan and stimulating community. Please check the Visiting Scholar section of our website for a list of new and continuing visitors to our Department.

We have, as always, a very lively program of philosophical events scheduled for the coming year, including a Townsend Visit by Michael Friedman, a George Myro Memorial Lecture by Timothy Williamson, a Howison Lecture by Robert Brandom and many talks and colloquia by distinguished philosophers from the US and abroad. Detailed information and updates are available on the events section of our website.

Paolo Mancosu, Department Chair

August 09, 2012