The course is designed for students in philosophy.  It is designed to aid students in acquiring important research skills that they will need in the course of their PhD research.  The course typically consists of 24 2 hour sessions in seminar format. This will be taken over 2 semesters.

• To identify important, potentially fruitful research questions within a subfield of philosophy

• To find in large literatures key resources which repay intensive study

• To identify and focus on the crucial issues a text raises, and to avoid being sidetracked by minor questions

• To situate their research within the broader aspects of their discipline

• To see the relationships between crucial texts, and the questions they raise

Grading will be: pass/fail. Students must gain a pass grade for each component of the assessment.

1. 30%, 6 x 1000 words, written responses to each of the readings (assessed by the principal supervisor) comprised of:
- 2 responses to compulsory readings
- 2 responses to selected readings from a given list
- 2 responses to self-selected readings  
2. 20%, discussions with peers and attendance
3. 50%, 5000 words completion of a draft of a key concepts and/or argument and/or methodology chapter or equivalent.

There will be set reading for each session provided online plus recommended background reading.

2 hours per session plus some background reading per session. 

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Enrolment as a PhD Student

One of the learning objectives is for students to find for themselves important material. But their efforts will be supervised and monitored by individual instructors.

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