Humanities and Social Sciences

Philosophy Program

Postgraduate Study: Areas of Supervision

Areas of Research

Students are able to take either a Masters or PhD by research. For students without a first-degree in philosophy, a range of graduate diploma and certificate courses is available. In addition to the staff mentioned below, adjunct and honorary staff are regular contributors to seminars, helping to create a lively and supportive research environment in philosophy.

Mind, Logic and Language

Frank Jackson has a world-wide reputation in philosophy of mind and language, and also for his work on conditionals. Frank not only gained his PhD from La Trobe, but lectured at La Trobe during much of the 1970s, rejoining the department early in 2008. Other senior staff in the department include Ross Brady, who is well-known for his work in non-classical logic, and the chair, Andrew Brennan, who works on philosophical logic and philosophy of mind. John Fox also works on philosophical logic and theories of truth. Projects in the mind, logic and language area include:

• Language and representation
• Theory of reference
• Metaethics
• Systems of relevant logic
• Paradox, entailment and negation
• Entailment and meaning-containment
• Conditionals, inferences and explanations
  

Environmental Ethics and Policy

Janna Thompson is well-known for her work on intergenerational justice, sustainability and social policy, as well as on environmental ethics, while Freya Mathews writes at the cutting edge of ecological metaphysics. Along with Andrew Brennan and Y. S. Lo, they form the biggest concentration of environmental philosophers in Australia. Supervision is available for projects in the following areas:

• The origins of environmental crisis
• Anthropocentrism, value and ethics
• Daoism and the environment
• Intergenerational justice
• Ecological metaphysics and philosophies
• Philosophy of sustainability
  

Critical Race and Whiteness

The Philosophy Department at La Trobe is the only one in Australia with a specialism in critical race and whiteness theory, thanks to the pioneering work of Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos. With close relations between philosophers and staff in History, European Studies and Asian Studies, supervision is available in these areas:

• Migrants, ethnicity and discrimination
• Indigenous sovereignty
• Racism, multiculturalism and the liberal state

Phenomenology, embodiment and cultural theory

Philosophy hosts undergraduate programs in gender and diversity studies, and several staff work on feminism and issues of embodiment. Jack Reynolds has a special interest in Merleau-Ponty and contemporary European philosophy, working on the intersection between phenomenology and cognitive science. Philipa Rothfield has explored topics in dance, movement and embodiment. Her research also focuses on cultural difference, feminism, race and ethnicity in relation to phenomenology. George Vassilacopoulos also researches classical Greek philosophy as well as Hegel and German idealism. Supervision is avaiable in:

• Existentialism and Phenomenology
• Biomedicine, difference and the body
• Philosophy and politics of the body
• Time and politics
• Corporeality and performance

European Philosophy

La Trobe is home to one of the most dynamic teams in Australia working on the links between the history of European philosophy and issues of contemporary relevance. Philipa Rothfield is currently engaging with Nietzsche and Klossowski, bringing them to bear on questions of reconciliation, while Jack Reynolds is investigating the methodological issues involved in the analytic/continental divide. Using the work of Deleuze, Derrida and others he is also assessing the centrality of time to political philosophy. George Vassilacopoulos researches classical Greek philosophy as well as German idealism. With Toula Nicolacopoulos – who has recently com pleted an extensive Hegelian critique of liberal political philosophy – George is also interested in Hegel’s system as well as in current efforts to move beyond this, as in the work of Alain Badiou. With expertise in Greek philosophy, and nineteenth and twentieth century thought the La Trobe European philosophy team offers supervision in:

• Analytic and continental philosophy compared
• Hegel’s science of logic
• Utopia, creativity and community
• Plato on The Republic
• Nietzsche, Klossowski, Hegel, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Irigaray, and Derrida