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Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
  • Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
  • What we do
  • Join us for study, work or visit
  • Who we are

What we do at CAPPE

The Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)'s rigorous intervention in the public arena aims to extend the practice of philosophy beyond its traditional academic boundaries.

Our critical approaches in philosophy and politics extend the bounds of academic knowledge, while engaging with a range of partners in the public, charity, private and policy sectors. Our well-attended seminars, symposia, workshops and public lectures ensure that contemporary moral and political issues are promoted through public facing engagement.

Members of CAPPE offer a supportive environment for the successful publication of research across the spectrum of philosophy, politics and ethics. 

  • Visit our blog site for more information on forthcoming and past events
  • Visit our research database for information on CAPPE members' published work

Our research is at the cutting edge of contemporary debates. Many of our researchers have contributed the major debates of this century – decolonisation, climate change, populism and social justice are central to our work.

We welcome PhD students, visiting scholars and anyone interested in the work we do. Please see our 'Join us for study, work or visit' page.

 

Find out how to join us as a member, collaborator or visitor

Our research at the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)

Our work falls into four broad areas though our many research projects all engage with these key elements of our work: 

  • Rethinking and critically engaging with the disciplines and practices of Philosophy and Politics with particular attention to the challenges we are presented with today; 
  • Understanding emerging forms of politics and the challenges they present to critique. We have a long history of engagement with a range of social movements including populist, feminist, queer, climate change and anti-racist groups;
  • Learning from and contributing to new theoretical debates in critical theory, philosophy and politics;
  • Engaging with our local and global communities to foster interesting research, collegiality and mutual support. 

CAPPE has a number of ongoing research projects that you can read more about on our blogsite. Each project develops a supportive academic focus for research, outreach, collaboration and sharing of knowledge.

Our work includes workshops, supervision of Doctoral research, publications, conference and working groups with networks of scholars around the globe.

Our annual academic conferences each tackles a theme of major philosophical and political importance. It often results in journal or book publications. 

 

 

 

Creative black and white photograph. Hands of different skin tones touch and interlock, palms forward.

Critical theory and radical politics

The populist movements of Southern Europe and Latin America, global protest movements, art activists, migrants who violate territorial borders and slum dwellers who remake global cities all intervene critically to disrupt and improve their worlds. This research group develops critical theory as a uniquely interdisciplinary response to contemporary forms of radical, and often apparently marginal, political, artistic and spatial interruptions.

The researchers in critical theory and radical politics draw on contemporary critical theoretical work, with a broadly post-foundationalist perspective.

We explore how critical theories interact with and respond to radical politics and protest. The first decades of the twenty-first century saw novel forms of political, artistic and spatial resistance to global order. Over the past decade we have hosted many of the world's leading critical theorists including Ernesto Laclau and Wendy Brown.

We welcome staff and associate members, postgraduate student critical theorists and students of radical politics, as well as events visitors with an interest in these areas of work. For further information contact Clare Woodford.

Row of seated figures, facing away in middle-eastern setting

Applied philosophy

CAPPE’s approach is interdisciplinary, collaborative and concerned to contribute both within the academy and beyond it.

We focus on philosophy’s contribution to public and political debate around political and moral issues. Examples include: the ethics of insurance; torture; terror; war photography; medical practice and complicity. As well as initiating research topics ourselves, we are open to suggestions from others, whether academic, activist or both.

 

 

A cardboard, handwritten sign on a protest march reads No jobs on a dead planet. Representing applied philosophy and ethics research.

Our impact and outreach from the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)

CAPPE works with a range of universities and organisations around the world. These include Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, UK; Hannah Arendt Centre, University of Verona, Italy; Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP); Political Studies Association (PSA); Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry, Ghent University, Belgium; Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins USA; International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs hosted by University of California Berkley, USA; and the Universities of Santiago, Chile; Pelotas, Brazil; Recife, Brazil; Vienna, Austria; Helsinki, Finland; Thessaloniki, Greece; Complutense, Madrid, Spain; Roskilde, Denmark; Kyoto, Japan.

We also work closely with colleagues outside higher education. These include think tanks such as Autonomy: the theatre group, Hydrocracker, MEDACT, colleges and schools across the UK, and charities.

CAPPE colleagues engage closely with both policy and practice, aiming to have impact that changes how we live together in positive ways. We have worked with a range of political parties debating the politics of Populism, including with PODEMOS in Spain.

CAPPE welcomes the opportunity to engage with individuals and organisations outside the University. 

Our research output from the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)

Details of research publications and other outputs fostered by the centre and achieved by its members, along with funded projects delivered by the centre, can be accessed on the centre's database of research. 

  • Visit the CAPPE overview page on our research database
  • Visit the record of our research publications
  • Visit the record of our funded research projects

Visit our institutional record of research outputs and projects

Our members' most recent publications

  • Decoloniality, dewesternisation, and the Responsibility to Protect

    Dunford, R., 20 Feb 2025, In: European Journal of International Security. p. 1-13 13 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • 3/13/2023

    Wells, E., 26 Feb 2024, In: Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work. 17, Winter 2024, p. 55 1 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Absorption as Lawgiving, Lawgiving as Identity

    Edmeads, L., 12 Feb 2024, In: Journal of Social and Political Philosophy. 3, 1, p. 104-107 4.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Chapter 3: Uneven Vulnerability

    Wells, E., 26 Feb 2024, In: Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work. 17, Winter 2024, p. 56 1 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Democracy, Sovereignty and the People

    Woodford, C., 12 Feb 2024, In: Journal of Social and Political Psychology. 3, 1, p. 97-101 5 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Heterolingualism as literary activism: resisting oppression through strangement of language

    Kennedy, N., 2024, (Accepted/In press).

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

  • Linguistic auto-poetry: An auto-theoretical approach to the multilingual subject’s self/ves and relationship to language(s)

    Kennedy, N., 2024.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

  • Memetic Feminism and Tik Tok

    Canton, W. & Zacharek, K., 29 Apr 2024, Sonic Rebellions: Sound and Social Justice. Canton, W. (ed.). 1 ed. Routledge, Vol. 1. p. 91-111

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBN › Chapter › peer-review

  • Motions in Pictures: From Habermas’s Informal Political Sphere to Formal Politics in the Films Footloose, Land and Freedom and The Beguiled

    Thomas, J. & Tunney, S., 4 Nov 2024, In: Humanities. 13, 6, 16 p., 152.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Part Two: Bodies in Spaces of Injury

    Wells, E., 26 Feb 2024, In: Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work. 17, Winter 2024, p. 57 1 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Populism, Impossible Time, and democracy's people problem

    Woodford, C., Oct 2024, Populism and Time: Temporalities of a Disruptive Politics. Knott, A. (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBN › Chapter › peer-review

  • She Is the Bottom of the Well, a Monster or is it I Am, within Her, the Bottom of the Well, a Monster or is it I Perceive, from within Her, the Bottom of the Well, a Monster or is it We Are, I within Her, at the Bottom of the Well, a Monster: by Edit, PhD Researcher Care via Creative Practice in Interdisciplinary Studies (Creative Writing, Literature, Philosophy, and Cognitive Sciences), University of the City and the Tower

    Wells, E., 1 Jan 2024, In: The Text. 6, 1, 7 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Sonic Rebellions: Sound and Social Justice

    Canton, W. (Editor), 29 Apr 2024, Routledge.

    Research output: Book/Report › Book - edited › peer-review

  • "Splendid Failures": Inclination, Slow Regicide, and Performative Critique

    Edmeads, L., 29 Apr 2024, In: Res Publica: Journal of the History of Political Ideas. 27, 1, p. 51-56 6 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond

    Jordan-Baker, C. & Holloway, P. (Editor), 1 May 2024, Palgrave Macmillan.

    Research output: Book/Report › Book - edited › peer-review

  • A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If by Marie-Laure Ryan

    Wells, E., 1 Mar 2023, In: South Central Review. 40, 1, p. 127-129 3 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Book Review

  • Brown BritainTM

    Yusufi, N., 1 May 2023

    Research output: Non-textual output › Web publication/site

  • Constellations, Mediation and Mimesis: Relationality in Ethical life

    Edmeads, L., 4 Apr 2023.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

  • Exploring Intersections of Unreadability and Climate Change

    Wells, E., 26 May 2023.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

  • How the far-right impacted activism in the Brazilian Amazon

    Benzaquen, G., Pessoa Cavalcanti, R., da Silva Ribeiro Gomes, S. & Porto Almeida, V., 2 Aug 2023, Transforming Society : Bristol Policy Press.

    Research output: Other contribution

  • If the River is Hidden

    Cherry Smyth, 24 Nov 2023, époque press. 128 p.

    Research output: Book/Report › Book - authored

  • Phenomenologies of ‘Social Acceleration’: Some consequences and opportunities for education studies in an unknown future

    Canning, J. & Jay, E.-L., 5 Dec 2023, In: Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 45, 1, p. 131-145 15 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Articulating justice and intertemporality in urban mobility issues: The crux of climate change

    Brons, M., 30 Jun 2022.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract

  • Behind the Address: Adorno, Butler, and the Mediation of Relationality

    Edmeads, L., 31 May 2022.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

  • Climate-framed displacement: Towards decolonising, de-dichotomising and democratising resilience

    Brons, M., 31 Mar 2022.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract

  • Conditionality and contentment: Universal Credit and UK welfare benefit recipients’ life satisfaction

    Thornton, I. & Iacoella, F., 28 Mar 2022, In: Journal of Social Policy. 29 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Discourse, Demand, Desire: An Intersectional Analysis of Mass Shooter Texts

    Myketiak, C., 2022, (Accepted/In press) Palgrave.

    Research output: Book/Report › Book - authored › peer-review

  • Ethnic minority households will be among the hardest hit by the cost of living crisis

    Zacharek, K., 24 Aug 2022, 1 p.

    Research output: Other contribution

  • Exploring a Framework for Unreadability in Narrative Fiction

    Wells, E., 15 Oct 2022.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

  • Exploring a Framework of Unreadability in Narrative Fiction

    Wells, E., 1 Jan 2022, In: The Text. 4, 1, p. 46-61 16 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

 

 

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