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KEELING SCHOLARS IN RESIDENCE

The Keeling Scholar in Residence is an internationally renowned scholar of ancient philosophy who is appointed as an honorary member of the UCL Philosophy Department.  The Keeling Scholar in Residence for 2024-2025 will be Prof. David Charles (Yale University). Previous Keeling Scholars in Residence were Prof. Rachel Barney (2023-2024), Prof. Sarah Broadie (2018-2021), Prof. David Sedley (2017-2018) and Prof. McCabe (2014-2017).  

PROF. DAVID CHARLES

Keeling Scholar in Residence, 2024-2025

Details to follow.

PROF. RACHEL BARNEY

Honorary Professor in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy

Keeling Scholar in Residence, 2023-2024

Rachel Barney was a visitor to the Keeling Centre in 2020-2021. She is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Classical Philosophy, affiliated with both the Classics Department and the Philosophy Department, at the University of Toronto. She was an undergraduate at University of Toronto, and returned in 2003 after earning a PhD at Princeton and teaching at the University of Ottawa, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. Her research has ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius, but has always focussed on Plato. Her particular interest is in areas where questions of ethics, psychology, epistemology, and philosophical method meet, as in Plato’s theory of the good.

 

Prof. Barney’s current research involves three projects: a book on the sophist Protagoras, a monograph on the politics of Plato’s Republic (based on her Nellie Wallace Lectures at Oxford in 2022), and Tanner Lectures to be delivered at UC Berkeley in spring 2024. As Keeling Scholar, she will give a seminar on the theme of the Tanner Lectures: the idea of craft [techne].​ The seminar will attempt to explicate and assess Plato’s idea of a craft as a skilled practice oriented to a good and governed by internal norms, with complex relations to virtue, happiness, and politics. In addition to Plato, Protagoras, and Aristotle, reference will be made to relevant modern philosophers such as MacIntyre, Korsgaard, and Murdoch, and to ideas of craft and virtue in Chinese philosophy. 

 

Select Publications

  • Plato and the Divided Self, eds. Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

  • Names and Nature in Plato's Cratylus (Routledge, 2001).

  • “Platonic Qua Predication”, Analytic Philosophy 2023, 1-20.

  • “Intellectualism and the Method of Hypothesis in Plato's Early Dialogues”, in Psychology and Value in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy: The Ninth Keeling Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, edited by M. R. Hampson and F. Leigh (Oxford, 2022), 21-53

  • “Techne as a Model for Virtue in Plato”, in Productive Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy, ed. T. Johansen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 62-85. 

  • “Becoming Bad: Aristotle on Vicious Habituation”, Festschrift for John M. Cooper, ed. Ben Morison and Hendrik Lorenz, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy special volume 57 (2019), 273-307.

  • “Gorgias' Encomium of Helen”, in Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy, ed. E. Schliesser, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 1-25.

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PROF. SARAH BROADIE

Honorary Professor in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy

Keeling Scholar in Residence, 2018-2021

Sarah Broadie was Professor of Moral Philosophy and the Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews.  Prof. Broadie was a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, and was the 105th President of the Aristotelian Society. In June 2019 she was awarded an OBE, for services to Classical Philosophy. She published extensively on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and had interests in contemporary issues in metaphysics and moral philosophy (see select publications). She was Honorary Professor at the Department of Philosophy at UCL, and Keeling Scholar in Residence from 2018 until her death in 2021.

At UCL, Sarah was a very active Keeling Scholar in Residence. She supervised graduate students, was a frequent attendee at the ancient philosophy seminars at the Institute for Classical Studies, and taught a graduate seminar in ancient philosophy at UCL each year – the topic for her first seminar at UCL being the subject of her most recent book, Plato’s Sun-like Good, published 2021 with Cambridge University Press. Over her long and distinguished career, Sarah authored 8 books and numerous articles, mostly in ancient philosophy, supervised a large number of graduate students, and, after holding appointments at Edinburgh, Yale, Rutgers, the University of Texas (at Austin), and Princeton, joined the St. Andrews Philosophy Department in 2001, where she was Professor of Moral Philosophy and Wardlaw Professor. A huge loss to the philosophical community, Sarah will be sorely missed, and long remembered for her philosophical insight and achievements, sharp wit, and personal warmth.

A memorial notice by John Haldane and Moira Gilruth can be read here, and a tribute to Sarah by Simona Aimar can be read here.

Select Publications

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PROF. DAVID SEDLEY

Keeling Scholar in Residence, 2017-2018

David Sedley was educated at Trinity College, Oxford and gained his PhD at University College London. Since 1976 he has been a Fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, and held the position of Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 2000 until his retirement in 2014. He has also worked as editor for Classical Quarterly (1986-1992) and Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (1998-2007). Prof Sedley was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.

Prof Sedley has published extensively on a wide range of topics within Ancient Philosophy. He is the co-author, with Prof AA Long, of The Hellenistic Philosophers, and has published monographs on Plato's Cratylus and Plato's Theatetus. Prof Sedley's recent work has focused on Plato's Phaedo. 

In Terms 1 and 2 of 2017/18 academic year, Prof Sedley taught a graduate class on 'Dualisms in Ancient Philosophy'.

Select Publications​​

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PROF. MM MCCABE

Keeling Scholar in Residence, 2014-2017

MM McCabe studied at Newnham College Cambridge and has taught at Cambridge and KCL, where she is Professor Emerita. MM is a Bye-Fellow of Newnham College Cambridge; she has held visiting appointments at Yale (Spring 2015) and as Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton in Spring 2015, and in 2016/17 she delivered the Sather Lectures at Berkeley. Prof McCabe has written extensively in ancient philosophy, mainly on Plato, but also on the Presocratics, Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the philosophy of medicine. 

 

During her tenure as Keeling Scholar in Residence, Prof McCabe ran three graduate seminars, and provided graduate supervision at points throughout the year. In Term 1 of the 2014-15 academic year, Prof McCabe ran a Graduate Seminar on Plato's Theatetus and in Term 3 of the 2015-2016 year ran a Graduate Seminar on Plato's Protagoras and its themes. In Term 1 of the 2016-17 academic year Professor McCabe ran a graduate seminar on Plato's Euthydemus.

Select Publications

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