About us | In Parenthesis

In Parenthesis is a research collaboration between Dr Clare MacCumhaill (Durham University) and Dr Rachael Wiseman (University of Liverpool). In order to get to grips with the staggering complexity, depth and volume of work by the Quartet they rely on the expertise, generosity, and time of numerous friends, researchers, students, archivists and other sorts of experts and enthusiasts! Here are some of them.

Dr Rachael Wiseman

Lecturer, University of Liverpool

Rachael is a philosopher of mind, action and ethics and works especially on the philosophy of G. E. M. Anscombe. With Clare she co-directs the In Parenthesis Project. More…

Dr Clare MacCumhaill

Lecturer, Durham University

Clare is a philosopher of perception, aesthetics and mind. With Rachael she co-directs the In Parenthesis Project. More …

Liza Thompson

Editor, Bloomsbury Publishing

Liza is helping us to promote the work of the Quartet through – among other things – a series of Readers, to be published by Bloomsbury.

Annie McCallian

PhD student, Manchester University and University of Liverpoool

Annie worked as an intern on In Parenthesis 2016-17 and designed our reading programme. Her PhD research investigates women’s representation in philosophy – with a particular emphasis on reasons for women’s attrition from the discipline. . More…

Dr Mary Midgley (1919-2018)

Professor emeritus, University of Newcastle

Mary Midgley was an essential contributor to the project. Over cups of tea between 2015 and 2018 she shared her wisdom and memories. She has written and spoken about the group on this site. We’ll be forever grateful for her contribution.

Ana Barandalla

Research Associate

Ana is interested in the nature and scope of normativity, and does some occasional teaching at the Aga Khan University in London.

Hannah Marije Altorf

Research Associate

Hannah is Reader in Philosophy at St. Mary’s University. Her work on Iris Murdoch’s philosophy explores Murdoch’s understanding of human beings as ‘imaginative fantasising animals’, using the work of Michèle le Doeuff. She has a published a monograph (Iris Murdoch and the Art of Imagining, Continuum 2008).

Andrew Gray

Archivist, Durham University

Andrew is archivist at Durham University. He has catalogued the material gifted by Mary Midgley and her family and is on hand to discuss all things Midgley!

Jazmine Bourke

Post graduate, Durham University

Jazmine was intern on the project (2017-18). She convened the Durham University reading group and worked with PhilSoc. more…

Jessy Jordon

Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University (Maryland)

Jessy’s current scholarly work is focused on defending Neo-Aristotelian natural normativity from its detractors. He has published articles on Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch (https://directory.msmary.edu/people/jessy-jordan.html).

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Samuel Cooper

PhD student, University of Liverpool

Sam Cooper has a BA and MA from University of York. He is working on, among other things, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Aquinas and Wittgenstein. He has written a number of pieces for the website. More …

Ellie Robson

PhD Student, Birkbeck College, London

Ellie completed a BA and MA at Durham and started working with the In Parenthesis team at the beginning of 2017. Ellie has a specific interest in Mary Midgley on whom is writing her PhD.

Panayiota Vassilopoulou

Senior Lecturer, University of Liverpool

Dr Vassilopoulou is an expert in Plotinus — the topic of Mary Midgley’s thesis — and works, among other things, on feminist pedagogy and the role of myth in philosophical argument. Read more…

Elizabeth McKinnell

Post Doctoral Research Assistant

Liz works primarily in environmental ethics and feminist philosophy. She co-edited Science and the Self Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley. She is the project’s PDRA and philosopher in residence at the Midgley Archive.

Ian James Kidd

Research Associate

Ian is a lecturer in philosophy at University of Nottingham. He works on epistemic virtues and vices, philosophy of illness and broadly across ethics and history of philosophy. With Liz McKinnell, he co-edited Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley (Routledge, 2015).

Lotte Spreeuwenberg

PhD student, Antwerp University

Lotte’s PhD research focuses on love, ethics and moral psychology and in particular on the question of whether we have a duty to love. She is interested in anything that concerns Iris Murdoch. She is also part of the organisation of the Conference for Women in Philosophy, an annual event in the Netherlands committed to creating a more balanced environment and empowering women to make the academic space their own

Elisabeth Huh

BPhil Student, Oxford University

Elisabeth is in the first year of her BPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She is currently working on constructivism in metaethics, and is interested in Wittgensteinian approaches to ethics, political philosophy, and philosophical theories of the emotions. She worked for a human rights legal advocacy organization in Cambodia before starting the BPhil, and is passionate about using philosophical analysis to conceptualize and resolve moral disagreement.

Sasha Lawson Frost

BPhil Student, Oxford University

Sasha is in the first year of her BPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She’s currently working on the role of aspect perception in ethics, with a particular interest in Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. She’s also doing some stuff on Spinoza, Plato, animal ethics and the philosophy of medicine.

Amber Donovan

Research Associate

I completed my BA in Philosophy at Durham which is where I was first introduced to the In Parenthesis project and attended the reading group. Since first discovering these four thinkers, I have continued to engage with them and develop my interest – most recently by attending the reading group that was run alongside the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s lecture series which celebrated the centenary of Murdoch, Midgley, Anscombe and Foot. I am currently on a break from academia but shall be starting postgraduate study in the new academic year.

Mara-Daria Cojocaru

Independent Scholar

Mara is interested in the relation between reason and emotions, in particular in regards to human-animal-relations. She agrees with Mary Midgley that “sensitivity requires rationality to complete it, and vice versa” and is working on a book project on reasons for becoming passionate (about) animals. Mara has a background in political philosophy and has worked on philosophical pragmatism, too. Apart from that, she is pursuing a literary career as well. www.maradariacojocaru.weebly.com

Jess Sweeney

Program & communications coordinator, Collegium Institute, UPenn

Jess works at the Collegium Institute and is also the founder of a new project, Commonplace Living. She studied Art History and English during her undergraduate years and received her MA in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Her current research interests surround an exploration of enclosed gardens, particularly as the trope has developed and changed throughout the history of art, it’s use in nineteenth and twentieth century painting and it’s relation to the depiction of women. She is coordinating the partnership between #philosophybypostcard and the Collegium Institute, and developing a new arts initiative for the Collegium Institute.

Mitch Mainstone

M. St. Student, Oxford University

Mitch is currently completing the M. St. in English (1900-Present strand) at Hertford College, Oxford University. Before this, they were an undergraduate in English at The University of Manchester and at Freie Universität, Berlin. They are interested in the possibilities of genetic criticism, textual theory, and book-historical approaches as they relate to the work of queer and/or women writers of the C20th, with particular emphasis on the poetry notebooks of Iris Murdoch, as well as her wider ‘literary’-philosophical milieu.

Richard Stopford

Teaching Fellow, Durham University & IP Research Assistant

Richard works on Aesthetics, with specialism in the philosophy of Adorno. He designed the Resources for Teachers on this website.

David Loner

PhD researcher, Cambridge University

David is interested in the history of gender performance in modern British philosophy. His research details the adoption of elite modes of gender expression by first-generation female post-graduate students in the Moral Sciences Faculty at Cambridge. He contributes to Women (in Parenthesis) perspectives on the nature of doing philosophy with men after 1922, especially as it concerns the intellectual lives of women of talent like the American logician Alice Ambrose (1906-2001).

Will Hornett

PhD student at the University of Sheffield

Will works on the philosophy of action and perception, and his thesis is about the role that habits play in the explanation of action. In 2019 he worked for a month on a primarily historical project for Women in Parenthesis, focussing on the background condition they have identified in the flourishing of the four of them: the fact that a lot of men at Oxford fought in the war, or were seconded by the intelligence services. He will be looking at what a number of these philosophers did during the war, and charting how it affected the philosophical output and culture of Oxford throughout the wartime period.

Maria Balaska

Lecturer, University of Hertfordshire

Maria is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire. She is the author of ‘Wittgenstein and Lacan at the Limit: meaning and astonishment’ and the editor of the collection ‘Cora Diamond on Ethics’ (forthcoming). Her current research project brings together Heidegger and Arendt on the significance of earthly nature for humans, and studies the concepts of nature, earth, and technology.

Amy Ward

Student Intern, BA Philosophy student, Mount Allison University

Working on her undergrad degree in New Brunswick, Canada, Amy recently discovered the Quartet in a class on the history of analytic philosophy. She is particularly interested in finding ways of making philosophy more accessible and applicable to real life, and she enjoys exploring the ways philosophy can be paired with artistic expression (especially in literature, music, and podcasts).

Nav Aithani

Student Intern, 2020

Nav is a Durham Social Sciences undergraduate, drawn to the Quartet after reading Murdoch’s “The Idea of Perfection”. He joined the programme to explore the context in which these four philosophers fundamentally changed the landscape of modern philosophy, and what this teaches us about how we ought to teach and learn. He is also interested in the application of philosophical propositions to their logical ends in fields like economics and anthropology.

Greg McElwain

Professor, The College of Idaho

Greg McElwain is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The College of Idaho, USA. His research focuses on the thought of Mary Midgley and the intersection of animal and environmental ethics. He is author of Mary Midgley: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2019) and collaborated with Midgley during the final years of her life.

Amber Perera

Student, Durham University

Amber is in the third year of her English and Philosophy BA. She was drawn to the quartet by Anscombe’s ‘Intentionality of sensation’ and stayed for Midgely’s Gaia and Murdoch’s novels! She is interested in the intersection between the philosophy of action and the philosophy of Psychiatry.