Professor David Webb

Co-editor of the series Material Futures (Bloomsbury Press) on the work of Michel Serres.

Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL).

Member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Italian Philosophy

Member of the Scientific Board of Metodo: International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy.

Secretary of The British Society for Phenomenology (2004 – 2011)

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

PhD (Philosophy): University of Warwick
MA in Continental Philosophy: University of Essex
BSc (Physics and Philosophy): University of Warwick

Modern European Philosophy, especially French epistemology and philosophy of science (Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès) and phenomenology Martin (Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas).

My research is centred on recent and contemporary European philosophy, and I have a particular interest in French epistemology and philosophy of science. I am currently drawing on the work of Michel Serres to examine the relation between knowledge, ethics, and politics, with particular reference to governance at times of crisis. I am also interested in readings of Foucault’s conception of critique as a rational practice.

More generally, I am interested in most areas of recent continental philosophy, and especially in ways that theoretical work intersects with concrete ethical and political concerns. PhD enquires are welcome from anyone wanting to work topics relevant to recent European philosophy, and in particular to Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Gaston Bachelard.

HEIF4 project in partnership with Burslem Town Regeneration.

On the MA in Continental Philosophy, I teach the following modules:

• Knowledge and Politics
• Phenomenology and Ontology (shared)
• Research Topics in Continental Philosophy (shared)
• MA dissertation projects.

I also supervise doctoral research in the areas of my interests and expertise.

Books

Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2012).

Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology (Continuum Press, London, February 2009).

Journal Papers

‘Temporal Discontinuity and the Image in Bachelard’s Philosophy of Science’, Kairos, 2016.

‘Praxis and the Time of Ethical Life in Aristotle’, Epoché, spring 2010.

Chapters in Books

‘Michel Serres on Virtue’ in Michel Serres: das vielfältige Denken, ed. Reinhold Clausjürgens and Kurt Röttgers, Brill: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020.

‘Bewegung’ entry for The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, ed. Mark Wrathall (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2020).

‘Introduction’ (Co-author), Michel Serres, The Birth of Physics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).

‘The Virtue of Sensibility’ in Rick Dolphijn (ed) A World is Born Here: Thinking the Contemporary with Michel Serres (Bloomsbury Press, 2018).

‘Causality and Law in Lucretius and Contemporary Cosmology’ in Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, J Greenstine & R Johnson (eds) (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2017).

‘Heidegger’ entry for The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, ed. Leonard Lawlor & John Nale (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014).

‘Michel Serres: from the History of Mathematics to Critical History’ in Time and History in Deleuze and Serres, ed Bernd Herzogenrath (Continuum Press, London, 2011).

‘Gianni Vattimo: Hermeneutics as a Practice of Freedom’, in Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder (eds) Between Nihilism and Politics: The Hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo (SUNY Press, New York, 2010).

‘Penser le multiple sans le concept: vers un intellect démocratique’, in François L’Yvonnet (ed) Michel Serres (Éditions de l’Herne, Paris, 2010).