Professor Simon Kirchin

Profile

I am the Director of the IDEA Centre at Leeds, which teaches ethics across many subject areas for the university.  Before joining Leeds I spent many years at the University of Kent, almost nine years of which were as Dean / Executive Dean.  I am also the Director of the British Philosophical Association, the main professional body for UK philosophers.  In this role I work extensively with school Exam Boards about philosophy and religious studies education.  I also care about philosophy in the public sphere and host two podcasts – Philosophy Takes on the News and Philosophy Gets Schooled.  

I have extensive experience of supervisiing PhD students and welcome applications.  Recent topics: agreement and disagreement; finance and philosophy of economics; thick concepts; particularism and reasoning; transhumanism and nudge theory; Kant and human rights; role ethics; virtue theory and psychology; praise, blame and ignorance. 

Responsibilities

• Director of IDEA
• Deputy Head of School

Research interests

I am currently working on a range of projects: normativity; the ethics of imitation; ethical issues involved in comedy performance; leadership within universities; trust and confidence in scientific communities.

I also have interests in researching into and promoting p[hilosophy in schools as well as diversifying our curricula.

• Applied ethics (many topics, but including):
  • heritage ethics
  • leadership ethics (esp. in higher education)
  • performance and ethics (esp. comedy and drag/imitation)
  • transhumanism
• Metaethics (all areas)
• Normative Ethics (esp. recent work on longtermism and altruism; 
• Aesthetics
• Epistemology (esp. agreement and disagreement; moral knowledge and testimony)

Student education

I teach ethics across many subject areas at Leeds. Currently, I am teaching (jnter alia):

• leadership ethics
• teamwork and fairness (in many subject areas)
• AI ethics
• risk
• ethics within psychiatry and the ethics of mental health