The Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy is a research centre for ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, housed within the Philosophy Department at UCL.

 

The Keeling Centre is an active and vibrant hub of research activities and events in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy at UCL, hosts a visiting Scholar in Residence, as well as visiting researchers specialising in ancient philosophy, and includes amongst its members graduate research students, postdoctoral scholars, and academic staff at UCL whose research lies in the field of ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. The longest running event is the annual S.V. Keeling Memorial Lecture (since 1981), which has been given by a string of internationally distinguished philosophers in the field and is open to the public. Several volumes of research flowing from the Keeling Lectures have been published. Other regular, public events include small one or two-day Workshops on some aspect of ancient Greek or Roman philosophy, a Graduate and Early Career Conference, and occasional Keeling Colloquia – larger topic- or issue-focused conferences with numerous international speakers. A number of volumes of research papers on topics treated in the Colloquia have been published, most recently in a series with Oxford University Press. Further local, in-house events include the organisation and alternate hosting of LOXY, the bicentennial London-Oxford-Yale conference in ancient philosophy, and the organisation and alternate hosting, two or three times per year, of the Graduate Triangle Conference in ancient philosophy.

 

Our Keeling Scholars in Residence visit for a term each year of their appointment and co-teach (with the Keeling Director) a graduate seminar based on their current research. The Keeling Scholar in Residence for 2024-25 is Prof. David Charles. Previous Keeling Scholars in Residence are Rachel Barney, Sarah Broadie, David Sedley, and M.M. McCabe. The Keeling Centre has hosted Visiting Researchers from Berkeley, Toronto, Princeton, Notre Dame, University of Fribourg, Carleton University, and the University of Nantes.

 

Permanent members of the Keeling Centre include three members of the Philosophy Department at UCL (Leigh: Director, Aimar, and Kalderon), a member of the Department of Greek and Latin (Cagnoli Fieconni), and a number of graduate research students working on a topic in ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy for their MPhil. Stud. or PhD theses. As well as organising the Graduate and Early Career Conference, our graduate research students contribute to the running of the intercollegiate group, the Lyceum Society. Each year the Keeling Centre offers at least one Keeling Graduate Research Scholarship (for the MPhil. Stud. or PhD), to the same value as LAHP (AHRC) scholarships, including a London Allowance.