Learning Environment

University College Cork offers an excellent learning environment for the programme. Originally founded in the 19th century it boasts a beautiful old campus yet is equipped with a full suite of modern facilities as a result of an extensive development process over the last decade. The School itself has recently brought on stream a fully equipped post-graduate research environment and laboratory where post-graduate students can study in tranquility or cooperate in common activities with one another and with staff members. There are many academic visitors of high international standing who offer papers or participate in joint seminars with members of staff that are also open to students. The School runs two successful international summer schools that are open to students on the programme. The Theory and Philosophy Summer School is held at the historical Blackwater Castle and the International Political Anthropology Summer School is held in Florence. 

School Profile

The School of Sociology and Philosophy contains two very high achieving departments. It is jointly composed of approximately twenty academic staff who pursue separate interests associated with both disciplines but who also overlap in ways highly suited to the proposed programme on global ethics with many joint seminars, summer schools and other cooperative activities. Recent seminars organised in the School have involved academics of high international standing such as Piet Strydom (University College Cork Emeritus), James Bohman (Saint Louis University), Robert Fine (University of Warwick), Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin), Paul Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Susan Brison (Dartmouth College).

Members of the School have an outstanding publishing record with as many as 10 significant books appearing in the academic year 2012: 

Vittorio Bufacchi (2012), Social Injustice: Essays in Political Philosophy. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Linda Connolly  (2011), Theorising Irish Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Niamh Hourigan  (2012), Ireland in the 21st Century: Who are we Now? London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen & Michael S. Drake  (eds) (2013), Experimental Methodologies: The Poetic Imagination in Social Science. London: Ashgate.

Julia Jansen (forthcoming), Imagination in Transcendental Philosophy: Kant and Husserl Reconsidered

Hans-Georg Moeller (2012), The Radical Luhman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cara Nine (2012), Global Justice and Territory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lilian O’Brien (2012), The Philosophy of Action. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Patrick O’Mahony (2012), Contemporary Theory of the Public Sphere. Oxford: Peter Lang.

Graham Parkes (forthcoming), Returning to Earth: World Philosophy and Human Flourishing

Tracey Skillington (2012), Climate Justice and Human Rights. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Arpad Szakolczai (2012), Comedy and the Public Sphere. London & New York: Routledge.

Joel Walmsley (2012), Mind and Machine. London: Palgrave MacMillan.