Professor Julian Dodd
- Position: Head of the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
- Areas of expertise: Philosophy of art, especially philosophy of music; metaphysics; Wittgenstein.
- Email: J.Dodd@leeds.ac.uk
- Website: PhilPapers | Googlescholar
Profile
I joined the University of Leeds in July, 2020 as Head of the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science.
Before that I was at the University of Manchester for twenty years, as Lecturer in Philosophy (from 1999) and then Professor of Philosophy (from 2006). During my time at Manchester I served two three-year terms as Head of Department.
I gained a BA in Philosophy from the University of Sussex and a BPhil (1990) and DPhil (1994) in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, finishing the latter while a full-time lecturer at Bolton Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Bolton). There I found it thrilling to teach a student cohort consisting largely of enthusiastic and committed returners to full-time education. They certainly put me through my paces.
I’ve enjoyed a wide range of service to the profession, most notably by serving on the Mind Association Executive and as Director of the Assocation from 2015-18.
Responsibilities
- Head of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
- Professor of Philosophy
Research interests
Over the last twenty years or so I’ve done a lot of work in the philosophy of music, writing two monographs, Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology (OUP, 2007) and Being True to Works of Music (OUP, 2020). The former, largely an exercise in applied metaphysics, gave me some notoriety as a defender of platonism about musical works; the latter focusses on normative issues, exploring the various norms of authenticity that govern our practice of performing works of Western classical music.
I have quite a wide range of research interests. My paper, ‘What 4’33” is’ (The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2018): 629-41) won the American Society of Aesthetics 2019 Ted Cohen Prize, and I have also recently published articles on the later Wittgenstein on rules and rule-following (in The Philosophical Quarterly), on cultural appropriation (in The British Journal of Aesthetics), and on the identity theory of truth (in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society). I am currently completing two papers: one on Wittgenstein’s so-called private language argument, and one on perspectival facts.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- BA in Philosophy (Sussex)
- BPhil in Philosophy (Oxford)
- DPhil in Philosophy (Oxford)
Professional memberships
- Mind Association (Honorary Life Member)
- British Philosophical Association
- American Society of Aesthetics
Research groups and institutes
- Centre for Aesthetic, Moral and Political Philosophy