Supervision
Supervision
I am available for, and interested in, supervising students, at any level, in any of the following areas:
- History of logic
- Logic (mathematical, philosophical, modal, etc.)
- Philosophy of language (especially philosophy of fiction)
- Philosophy of logic
- Philosophy of mathematics
- Medieval philosophy (especially logic/philosophy of language)
- Informal argumentation
- Human and machine reasoning
If you are a student at Durham and interested in working with me, please send me an email to set up an appointment to meet. If you are not currently a student at Durham, but are interested in being supervised by me, please see the departmental pages on taught degrees and research degrees to see the possible opportunities.
Current students
| Camelia Cazan | Master of Data Science (Durham) |
| Zekiye Goz | PhD, philosophy (Durham) |
| Francesca Hibbit | BA, philosophy (Durham) |
| Mingyue Liu | PhD, computer science (Durham) |
| Venetia Moir | BA, philosophy (Durham) |
| Kit Moore | BA, philosophy (Durham) |
| Cheks Nweze | Master of Data Science (Durham) |
| Simon Schmahl | BA, philosophy (Durham) |
| Máté Szebenyi | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) |
| Xie Wei | PhD, linguistics (Durham) |
| Joshua Yarrow | BA, natural sciences (Durham) |
| Yan Xu | PhD, philosophy (Durham) |
| Felipe Zarate | PhD, philosophy (Durham) |
Previous supervision & examination
PhDs
| Name | Graduated | Degree (Place) | My role | Thesis title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Julie Lundbak Kofod | 2022 | PhD, philosophy (Roskilde University) | External examiner | What on Earth was Arthur Prior Thinking? About Physics and Hybrid Logic |
| Adam Foxon | 2022 | PhD, history (Bishop Grosseteste University) | External examiner | Quod Homo sit Minor Mundus: Robert Grosseteste and the Potentiality of the Material World: Microcosmism and Deification in the Development of a Didactic Weltanschauung |
| Andrew Thomas | 2021 | PhD, philosophy (Durham) | Primary supervisor | “Extended Modal Realism: a New Solution to Problems of Non-existence and Intentionality” |
| Susan Notess | 2021 | PhD, philosophy (Durham) | Secondary supervisor | “Listening and Normative Entanglement: A Pragmatic Foundation for Conversational Ethics” |
| Ştefan Sarkadi | 2020 | PhD, informatics (KCL) | External examiner | “Deception” |
| Christophe Geudens | 2020 | PhD, philosophy (KULeuven) | External examiner | “Louvain Theories of Topical Logic” |
| Andrew Woodard | 2019 | PhD, philosophy (Durham) | Primary supervisor | “Predication and Identity in Copular Sentences” |
| Thomas J. Hughes | 2015 | PhD, philosophy (Durham) | Internal examiner | “Grammar, Ambiguity, and Descriptions: A Study in the Semantics of Definite Descriptions” |
Diplomas and Master’s degrees
| Name | Graduated | Degree (Place) | My role | Thesis title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fan Yu | 2023 | Master of Data Science (Durham) | Supervisor | “Machine Learning with TF-IDF Features Extraction for Sentiment Analysis of Movie Reviews” |
| Yuting An | 2023 | Master of Data Science (Durham) | Supervisor | Exploration of Sentiment Analysis Based on RNN, LSTM, BERT Model and Sentiment Analysis on Twitter Data” |
| David Huang | 2023 | Master of Data Science (Durham) | Supervisor | “Political Leaning in Forum Discussion: A Look into Chinese NLP” |
| Isabella Roper | 2023 | Master of Data Science (Durham) | Supervisor | “Trust and Big Data in the Covid-19 Pandemic: What is Necessary to Promote Trust in Data?” |
| Nico Tansley | 2022 | MA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | |
| Joshua Patterson | 2017 | MRes, philosophy (Oxford Brookes) | External examiner | “Aristotelian Philosophy Applied to Interactive Virtual Media: On the Effects of Transportation on the Player and the Practical Applications of Virtual Realites” |
| Susan Notess | 2016 | Graduate Diploma, philosophy (Durham) | Co-supervisor | “Sacred Languages: A Phenomenological and Pragmatic Account of Sacred Language Use” |
| Andrew Thomas | 2016 | MA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “What is Anna Karenina? How Fictional Realism can help dissolve the Paradox of Fictional Emotions” |
| Antonio Florio | 2012 | Master of Logic (Amsterdam) | Supervisor | “Science in Axiomatic Perspective” |
| Spencer Johnston | 2011 | Master of Logic (Amsterdam) | Internal examiner | “John Buridan’s Theory of Modal Consequence” |
| Lars Wortel | 2011 | Master of Logic (Amsterdam) | Internal examiner | “Side Effects in Steering Fragments” |
| Caroline Foster | 2008 | Master of Logic (Amsterdam) | Co-supervisor | “The Problem of the Perfect Agent: Investigations into Determinism” |
Undergraduate degrees
| Name | Graduated | Degree (Place) | My role | Thesis title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alim Demirbag | 2022 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Logical Models for Scientific Reasoning and Conceptual Revolutions” |
| Benedict Gardner | 2022 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Cosmological Unity in the Presocratics and the Upanisads” |
| Pete Ryall | 2022 | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) | Supervisor | “Narreality: Stories of Selves” |
| Charlotte Chevrie | 2021 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Information in the natural world: a new attempt at solving the combination problem for Panpsychism” |
| Annie Cole | 2021 | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) | Supervisor | “Towards solving the identity problem for In Re Structuralism” |
| David Millross | 2021 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Are unicorns non-existent? Understanding a 17 th Century Buddhist logician’s justification of nonexistence proofs and wider account of āśrayāsiddha.” |
| Jarren Santos | 2021 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “A framework for Code-Switching through the application of Propositional Dynamic Logic” |
| Ana Truesdale | 2021 | BA, liberal arts (Durham) | Supervisor | “To what extent does gendered language in spanish inform machismo culture in the spanish speaking world?” |
| Tristan Ashley | 2020 | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) | Supervisor | “Mean Something?” |
| Charles Bland * | 2020 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Should New Axioms Be Added to the Foundations of Mathematics?” |
| Sissy Chen | 2020 | BA, philosophy & English (Durham) | Supervisor | “Towards a Theory of Meaningful Language: Investigating Metaphors” |
| Tom Katon | 2020 | BA, liberal arts (Durham) | Supervisor | “The IQ of AI: What Does it Mean to Call AI ‘Intelligent’?” |
| George Singleton | 2020 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “The Unready-to-Hand Body: A Phenomenological Analysis of Anorexia Nervosa” |
| Nicholas Tansley | 2020 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Junk-Time: A Cybernetic Theory of Mind and Addiction in Postmodernity” |
| Kelly Wong | 2020 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Does the Mathematical Structuralists’ Ontology Shape Reality?” |
| Amber Mullins | 2019 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “A Philosophical Analysis of the Nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass“ |
| Richard Burn | 2018 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Identity of Fictional Characters Across and Within Media” |
| Luciana di Mascio | 2018 | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) | Supervisor | “A Philosophical Analysis of J.K. Rowling’s Account of Life After Death in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter” |
| Samin Gokeckus * | 2018 | BA, philosophy & psychology (Durham) | Supervisor | “Elizabeth Hamilton’s Early 19th Century Scottish Associationism; Tracking Modern Developmental Psychology and Neuroscience” |
| Grace Greer | 2018 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Do Mathematical Statements Have Objective Truth-Values?” |
| Tom Rojas | 2018 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Can Pascal’s Wager Resist Infinitesimal Probabilities?” |
| Tomas Bermejo | 2017 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Carnap and Quine’s Debate on Ontology” |
| Nathan Davies | 2017 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “A Meaningless Dissertation: Why Meaning Can’t be Analysed in Terms of Truth” |
| Amber Donovan * | 2017 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Egotistical Investigations: Diagnosing the Problem of My ‘Self'” |
| Dan Foggin | 2017 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Where Are They? A Solution to the Fermi Paradox Using the Anthropic Principle” |
| Daniel Fox | 2017 | BA, philosophy & physics (Durham) | Supervisor | “Towards a New Conception of Human Rights” |
| Andrea Mikulandova | 2017 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Using Temporal Logic to Construct a Model of Restricted Time Travel Via Time Turners” |
| Constance O’Conor | 2017 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “The Fairy Tale Paradox: Logical and Ethical Tensions in Teaching Fantastic Morals by Fantastic Means” |
| Sophie Oliver | 2017 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Realism in Mathematics: Set Theoretic Commitment to the Infinite” |
| Sam Courtney-Guy | 2016 | BA, PPE (Durham) | Supervisor | “What Kind of Problem is Kripke’s Rule-Following Paradox?” |
| David Harris | 2016 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Artificial Intelligence and Philosophical Logic” |
| Dirk Hofland | 2016 | BA, PPE (Durham) | Supervisor | “The School-Choice Trilemma” |
| Imogen Maclaren | 2016 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Reappraising The Harm in Hate Speech: A Dynamic Approach to Freedom of Speech” |
| Toby Smith | 2016 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Modelling Knowledge- and Belief-Based Moral Obligations: An Accessible Tool For Philosophical Analysis” |
| Kim Tullar * | 2016 | BA, natural sciences (Durham) | Supervisor | “Clarifying and Solving Newcomb’s Problem” |
| Anna Wallace | 2016 | BA, combined arts (Durham) | Supervisor | “Can There Be A Neuroscience of Grammaticalized Thought?” |
| Kishen Vora | 2015 | BA, philosophy (Durham) | Supervisor | “Can Robots Be Moral?” |
* Winner of the Philosophy Department Dissertation Prize for dissertations with the highest mark out of all dissertations or out of all Single Honors philosophy students.
Other supervision
| Maria Tolchenova | Laidlaw scholar, philosophy (Durham) |