The Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE) has an exemplary record for nurturing academic talent, engaging students of all levels in philosophical and political debate both formally and informally. Many of our students have taken PhDs with us having studied for undergraduate and master’s degrees, several have stayed to become valuable members of staff.
As well as the close community that we have established in CAPPE itself, we share academic facilities and co-organise events with other Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence across the university. We have a very close allegiance with the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories based in the same building, and collaborate regularly with the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics, and the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender.
Our students also network with colleagues across History of Art and Design, the School of Humanities and Applied Social Science and members of the wider political and philosophical interest groups across Sussex, who come to our regular seminars, including policy-makers, teachers, MPs and academics.
We look forward to hearing your project proposal. As a guide to our major areas of focus, we particularly welcome projects addressing:
- concerns around the nature, structure and scope of violent conflict including the social and cultural history of modern warfare, with reference to the total wars of the 20th century, legacies and memories of warfare, truth, justice and reconciliation in ‘post-conflict’ societies;
- political philosophy, moral philosophy, applied philosophy and contemporary critical theory, including neoliberalism; the politics of inequality and applied ethics;
- colonial and postcolonial cultural and social history with reference to the histories and legacies of transatlantic slavery, forms of migration, diasporic identity, the anglophone Caribbean, the Black Atlantic, and 20th century US cultural history, especially histories of 'race' and civil rights;
- histories of identity formations such as gender, ‘race’, nation and class and the role of cultural memory in these formations.
The list below will highlight some of our strengths in collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches through the lens of politics, philosophy and ethics:
- Justice, terror and ethics
- Class, history and politics
- Philosophy and contemporary critical theory
- Applied philosophy and ethics
- Moral and political theory
- Globalisation, environmental politics and human rights
- Social and cultural histories of warfare including post-conflict legacies
- Gender, race and class
- Race, Empire and colonialism
- Cultural memory: theory, politics, history
- Aesthetics, politics and the philosophy of art