We note with sadness the death of David Evans, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Queen’s University Belfast. David’s contribution to the cause of Philosophy, over many years, was enormous. He was a member of the National Committee for Philosophy, the forerunner to the BPA, for eleven years, including a four-year stint as President, and was a member of the first BPA executive committee. Click here for Jonathan Gorman’s obituary.
Hefce have published their consultation document on the Research Excellence Framework; you can see it here. We’ll be discussing this at our next Executive Committee meeting, and also liaising with learned societies in Philosophy and other subject associations in the Arts and Humanities. If you’d like to let us know your views, please email me (h.beebeee AT bham.ac.uk).
One obviously significant proposal is that the number of UoAs being radically reduced; the current proposal is to have Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies as a single UoA. We will be discussing how best to address this with other A&H disciplines, as almost all of them are similarly affected. (Please don’t bother emailing me to tell me you think merging the UoAs is a bad idea — I’m taking that as the default position. Feel free to email me if you think it’s a good idea though.)
Here’s our response to the second round of the AHRC ‘Future Directions’ consultation, asking for feedback on ‘emerging themes’:
“The view of the British Philosophical Association is that the proposed themes are better than previous ones, in that they allow broader participation from the philosophy community, across a range of sub-disciplines (e.g. philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, ethics and applied ethics). However, we remain concerned that ring-fencing funding for specific themes diverts funding away from what we think should be a core aim of the AHRC, which is to support research of the highest quality independently of subject matter.”
