Fostering philosophical skills to thrive in diverse democracies.

Approach to Teaching

We have more access to information than any generation before us, and less agreement about what to do with it. Access is not the same as the capacity to deliberate — to hold a position, hear a challenge, and keep talking. My courses are forums for building that capacity.

Each week puts a thinker back into the material culture they argued from, because ideas are easier to evaluate when you can see what they were answering. My primary expertise runs from the eighteenth to the twentieth century — Kant, Schopenhauer, Arendt, Levinas — but students also read medievals like Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, Dōgen, Nāgārjuna, Śaṅkara, Maimonides, Anselm and Julian of Norwich. These are thinkers who made their arguments across deep and often incommensurable difference. That is the skill the courses foster. Along the way students take up perennial questions about knowledge, meaning and reality, and the ethical problems that arise from relationships, technology, religion and democratic life.

These habits of mind apply widely. Clinicians, lawyers and designers all face decisions where the technical answer is settled and the ethical one isn't. Work is often conducted with people who don't share your premises. Learning to argue well in those conditions is not a soft skill.

Kant's Enlightenment challenge still haunts democratic societies: sapere aude, dare to be wise! My courses take it as a directive rather than a slogan.

Courses

These courses primarily feature in the University of Newcastle’s Bachelor of Arts degree. They are also listed in several others such as Education, Communication and Media Studies, Mathematics, Data Science and Cybersecurity.

Service to University

  • 2024-27, Deputy Head of School Teaching and Learning, School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences

  • 2017-27, Discipline Leader, Philosophy, Politics and Ethics

  • 2019-23, Academic Representative, College Teaching and Learning Committee

  • 2019-22, Group Leader, Historical, Cultural and Critical Inquiry

  • 2016, Head of Discipline, Philosophy and Religion

  • 2012-16, Convenor, Theology Programs

Feedback

Annual averages of all questions asked

Students rated my taught courses at the University of Newcastle 4.4 out of 5 on average over the last six years. Engaging content, organisation and flexible choice of assessment topics are regularly cited as strengths.