Manchester Research Forum for European Philosophy

Manchester Research Forum for European Philosophy (MRFEP)

• Research Seminar Series – Autumn 2025

1. Wednesday 22 October 2025, 15:30–19:00

Parataxis, Adorno, Hölderlin, Identity

Sebastian Truskolaski (Lecturer in German Cultural Studies, University of Manchester)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A18

2. Tuesday 4 November 2025, 15:30–17:30

The Varieties of Vegetal Experience

Danielle Sands (Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Royal Holloway)

Daniel Whistler (Professor of Philosophy, Royal Holloway)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A104

3. Friday 7 November 2025, 15:30–17:30

The Psychosis of Race: Exploring the Post-Racial Imagination

Jack Black (Associate Professor of Culture, Media & Sport, Sheffield Hallam University)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A18

4. Friday 14 November 2025, 15:30–17:30

In Technology We Trust: A Critical Introduction to The Fundamental Tendency of Our Time by Emanuele Severino**

Antimo Lucarelli (PhD, SAS University of London)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A214

5. Wednesday 19 November 2025, 15:30–18:00

Artistic Reason and Imaginative Freedom: Yoko Ono’s Instruction Project qua Project of Autonomy

Gabriella Daris (PhD, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A112

6. Wednesday 26 November 2025, 15:30–19:00

Spectacle and Mourning: Guy Debord and Gillian Rose on Time and History

Tom Bunyard (Researcher, ‘Kantian Justice: A Responsibility-Enhancing Desert-Sensitive Theory’ , University of Liverpool)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A104

7. Thursday 27 November 2025, 15:30–17:30

Materialist Morphologies: Plants in Continental and Soviet Philosophy

Isabel Jacobs (Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A112

8. Date TBA

Excrementally Us

Keith Crome (Principal Lecturer in Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University)

📍 Venue TBA

        B) MRFEP Graduate Workshop

Friday 28 November 2025, 09:30–17:00

Graduate Workshop: Kant, German Idealism, and Romanticism

Keynote: Elisabeth Theresia Widmer (Postdoctoral Fellow, London School of Economics, Department of Government)

📍 Samuel Alexander Building, Room A7

We’re now the Manchester Research Forum for European Philosophy.

An open research forum for work in European philosophy (broadly construed).

Programme and events are in the work - details soon.

Follow this page for calls, announcement s of events, and reading groups.

Questions/interest: mrffep@gmail.com 

Continental Philosophy Northwest Research Network – Graduate Workshop Series 2025–26 This year’s theme: Kant, German Idealism, and Romanticism.

The Continental Philosophy Northwest Research Network (CPNWRN) is a platform for research in the continental philosophical tradition, broadly understood. Our activities include lectures, symposia, and thematic workshop series, with contributions from both established scholars and graduate researchers.

As part of our 2025–26 programme, we are running a Graduate Workshop Series devoted to Kant, German Idealism, Romanticism, and their reception. The series will provide a forum for presenting work in progress, fostering rigorous and constructive discussion among researchers working within these traditions in their philosophical, philological, or historical dimensions.

Possible topics include: Kant’s critical philosophy, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Hölderlin, Schiller, Novalis, 19th-century reception, and subsequent engagements in phenomenology, critical theory, and contemporary thought that remain grounded in this tradition.

Workshops will take place in person at the University of Manchester campus, with the first series running in the first semester. We welcome proposals from researchers based anywhere in the UK and Ireland.

To propose a presentation, please email cpnwrnworkshop@gmail.com with: 

• a short title, 

• a 300-word abstract, 

• your programme affiliation.

Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis until 15 September 2025, or until all slots are filled.

Yesterday's workshop at the University of Manchester marked the inaugural event of the Continental Philosophy Northwest Research Network.

The highlight was undoubtedly Howard Caygill’s keynote, “The Works of Madness: Foucault at Münsterlingen”, a radical re-reading of a familiar scene. Howard walked us through the contradictions of Foucault’s early years, his entanglement with Daseinsanalyse, and the overlooked testimony of the so-called “mad” themselves, patients resisting, performing, protesting through masks, art, and irony.

It meant a lot to have Howard with us, not just because of the talk, but because he’s been a mentor and someone whose work reminds us why we do this kind of philosophy at all.

Thanks also to Keith Crome and Sebastian Truskolaski for the sharp responses, and to everyone who came and made the conversation what it was. What began as a structured programme gradually unfolded into a genuinely dialogical exchange.

This was just the beginning. More events to come soon. Stay tuned.

First workshop of the Continental Philosophy Northwest Research Network.

Keynote speaker: Howard Caygill, CRMEP – Kingston University.

Keynote title: 'The Works of Madness: Foucault at Münsterlingen'.  

Location: C1.18 conference room, 1st floor, Ellen Wilkinson building, University of Manchester Campus.

Institution: School of Arts, Languages and Cultures - University of Manchester.

Date: 16 May, 2025.

The Continental Philosophy Northwest Research Network is pleased to announce its inaugural workshop. The keynote speaker for this year’s workshop will be Howard Caygill, Professor of Modern European Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University. Professor Caygill’s lecture examines Foucault's claim, in the 1961 preface to the History of Madness, that madness is 'nothing other than the absence of an oeuvre' by joining him on his 1954 visit to the mental hospital at Münsterlingen. By contemplating the photographic record of his visit Professor Caygill asks why Foucault was unable to see what was happening before his eyes in the works of the hospital inmates as they prepared for a carnival procession.

Following the keynote, responses will be offered by Keith Crome, Principal Lecturer in Philosophy and Director of Programmes in History, Politics, and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as Sebastian Truskolaski, Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Manchester’s School of Languages, Arts, and Cultures. Their contributions will provide critical perspectives on Professor Caygill’s address and facilitate the subsequent discussion regarding the contemporary state of philosophy.

Program

11:00 - 11:15 | Opening Remarks

Welcome by the organizer/moderator and brief introduction to the workshop’s theme.

11:15 – 12:00 | Keynote Presentation

Speaker: Howard Caygill

Topic: 'The Works of Madness: Foucault at Münsterlingen'.  

12:00 -13:30 | Response Panel

Discussion between the keynote Keith Crome and Sebastian Truskolaski.

13:30 – 14:00 | Break

14:00 –  | Open Discussion & Closing Remarks

Audience participation, moderated discussion

Format: In-person. All students and interested parties are encouraged to engage in the discussion.

Workshop Organizer: Nikolaos Anapliotis, PhD candidate in German Studies. nikolaos.anapliotis@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: This workshop is co-sponsored by the Postgraduate Research (PGR) budget and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Languages at the University of Manchester.

We extend our support to our colleagues at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.