Women Postgraduates in Philosophy at Sheffield

Although women are greatly underrepresented in philosophy as a discipline, Sheffield's Philosophy Department has a long history of support for women. Our very first graduate was Alice Miller, who received a First in 1915. More recently we have twice been recognised for women-friendliness by the Society for Women in Philosophy (see link on the right). We run two annual Women in Philosophy events:  an evening social event for postgraduate students, and a public lecture on Women in the History of Philosophy (see link).

Finally, we've always had unusually high numbers of women on our PhD programme. On this page we profile a few of our recent students.

Anna Mahtani

I came to Sheffield to do a PhD after being an undergraduate at Leeds and doing the BPhil at Oxford. I wrote my PhD on Vagueness, supervised by Rosanna Keefe and Jenny Saul.

I learnt so much at Sheffield: supervision meetings and seminars were always very challenging and pushed me to think harder, but the atmosphere was friendly and supportive. I also had lots of great philosophical conversations with other people on the PhD programme who I still discuss work with today.

After completing the PhD (and also working as a temporary lecturer for a year at Sheffield) I got a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work at Oxford.

Jules Holroyd

I did my BA in Philosophy at Sheffield from 2000-2003, and enjoyed it so much I stayed for the next 5 years, to do an MA and then a PhD. After completing my PhD (2008), I spent a year as Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, before taking up a lectureship in philosophy at Cardiff University. My PhD was on relational autonomy. Since then I've worked on autonomy in relation to mental capacity, and now also work on political obligation and punishment.

Sheffield provided a great environment to study for a PhD: there was an active research community amongst staff and postgraduates, with the weekly departmental and postgraduate seminars. The latter provided a really rigorous and constructive forum for feedback on work in progress. There was also a plethora of reading groups running throughout the year. One of the most enjoyable for me was the long running feminist philosophy reading group. This, along with the annual 'Drinks for Women Philosophers' meant there were great work and support networks within the department.

As well as these aspects of philosophy at Sheffield, all of the staff, but particularly my supervisors (Prof. Jenny Saul and Prof. Jimmy Lenman) were supportive throughout. My supervisors encouraged me to attend and submit papers to conferences, and to apply for funding to visit MIT for a term. It was really helpful to be in touch with other people working on the same topics elsewhere. I felt that I had people to talk about work with both within and outside the department, and good support networks - many of which have continued after the PhD.

Esa Diaz-Leon

I got my BA in Philosophy at the University of Murcia (Spain) in 2000, and I came to Sheffield in 2001 to pursue the MA/Research Training Year, and then a PhD, which I finished in 2007. My supervisors were Stephen Laurence and Rosanna Keefe, and my thesis was on the philosophy of consciousness.

I found the philosophy department at the University of Sheffield extremely supportive and helpful. Being a woman in philosophy can be a daunting experience sometimes, but the staff and graduate students in Sheffield surely gave me the support and encouragement I needed to help me get through the different stages of graduate school, applying for jobs, getting publications and finally getting a job!

Among the different aspects of the programme that were helpful, I have particularly fond memories of the annual evening for women philosophers, and the feminism reading group. The weekly graduate seminar and the multitude of reading groups on a variety of topics also helped to gain a solid philosophical background, and the confidence necessary to pursue my academic career.

I am now an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada), and I specialize in Philosophy of Mind and Language, and Philosophy of Gender and Race.

Suilin Lavelle

I spent five years as a graduate student in Sheffield, starting with my MA, supervised by Stephen Laurence, and then completing my PhD with George Botterill and Rob Hopkins. It's been a real privilege to be part of such a fantastic, friendly department; I gained as much from informal chats and reading groups with faculty and other graduate students as I did from my PhD research and supervision.
My primary research area is Social Cognition, which involves examining different accounts of how we understand others in social contexts. It is strongly interdiscplinary, drawing on data from psychology, anthropology and neuroscience to support and critique philosophical accounts of social interaction.
The Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, based in Sheffield, provided the ideal forum for me to pursue my research in an inter-disciplinary context, and I worked as an assistant to the director of the centre, Stephen Laurence, throughout my time as graduate student. I also had the opportunity to teach my own Philosophy of Mind course at second year level. These experiences set me in good stead for my current position as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, in the Mind, Language, and Embodied Cognition cluster of the philosophy department.

Lina Papadaki

I finished my PhD at Sheffield in 2007, and also spent two semesters teaching there. It was an ideal place to do research and work, and I got all the support one could wish for. It´s an especially nice place for women philosophers, with the feminism reading group running every semester, many people working on feminism, and friendly staff and students. I then got a two-year lectureship at Birkbeck College, University of London, and now I am on a tenure-track position in the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies at the University of Crete (Greece). I work on ethics, Kant and feminism.

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

I did my undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Sheffield. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed on to do both my MA and my PhD there. My PhD dissertation was on first person thought, supervised by Bob Stern and David Bell. One of the reasons I decided to stay was the supportive atmosphere in the department. The lecturers were friendly, approachable, and always available when you needed advice. There were also lots of other postgraduates, and we met up regularly to exchange ideas and discuss each other's work, so you never felt isolated. The positive experiences I had at Sheffield contributed to my decision to pursue a career in academia. I'm now a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nottingham.

Megan Kime

I came to Sheffield in 2002 to study for a BA in Politics and Philosophy. I then stayed to complete a MA in Political Theory in 2006, and eventually a PhD in Philosophy which was awarded in March 2010, both funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Sheffield, especially being part of the postgraduate community in the philosophy department. I have kept in touch with several members of the faculty and the former postgraduate students, and enjoyed opportunities to return for research seminars and so on.

After finishing my PhD I worked as an Assistant E-learning Developer at Research in Practice, based in the department of sociological studies at Sheffield. I then began my current job at the University of Leeds's Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Inter-Disciplinary Applied Ethics (IDEA CETL), as an MA Development Officer. My role involves developing e-learning materials for an online distance learning MA, and teaching applied ethics and some political philosophy on the Centre's MA in Healthcare Ethics.

During my time at Sheffield I had the opportunity to develop and teach a third-year course in applied political philosophy, funded by the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS). This has been great experience in my current role.

Mari Mikkola

I completed my PhD thesis on feminist philosophy and metaphysics in 2005. At Sheffield, I worked with Jennifer Saul and Robert Stern. I could not have asked for better and more committed supervisors. My interest in feminist philosophy was always take seriously and working on both feminist issues and metaphysics was encouraged. My supervisors as well as the rest of the faculty and my fellow students provided me with much food for thought and opportunities to develop my thinking in a non-competitive and friendly environment. From October 2010 onwards, I have been the Junior Professor in Practical Philosophy at the Humboldt-University, Berlin. Prior to that, I worked as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the Universities of Stirling (2005-2008) and Lancaster (2008-10). I cannot think of a place that would have prepared me better for these posts and my subsequent academic career than the Philosophy Department at Sheffield.