Tom Stoneham
Professor of Philosophy

Profile

Biography

I completed my PhD at the University of London in 1995 on the topic of Self-Knowledge. From 1994-2000 I taught at Oxford University, first as a Junior Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy, then as Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Merton College. I came to York in 2000, was appointed a Reader in 2004 and a Professor in 2008.

From 2006-14 I was Head of the Department of Philosophy.  From January 2015 to August 2020, I was the inaugural Dean of the York Graduate Research School, while - intermittently - continuing with my research. From 2020-24 I completed what is hopefully a final stint as Head of Department. Since 2024, I have been Ethics Lead on the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe AI Systems (SAINTS).

I am currently President of the International Berkeley Society and have been a Strategic Peer Reviewer and panel chair for the AHRC since 2013. I was Chair of the Editorial Board of the White Rose University Press 2020-24, Treasurer of the UK Council for Graduate Education 2018-20, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts 2013-22, Executive Committee of the British Philosophical Association 2013-22.

Over the decades my research has spanned many areas, including early modern philosophy, self-knowledge, perception, dreaming, trauma-related experiences, time and nothing. Currently I seem to be spending a lot of time writing and talking about AI and related technologies from an applied ethical and political perspective. More abstractly, I am working on a non-perfectionist moral theory which might end up being called ‘An ethics of coping’, or ‘How do I cope with this sh*t and not become a bad person?’.

Full details are available on the York Research Database.

I have supervised more than fifteen research students on Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Coleridge, and on self-knowledge, consciousness, folk-psychology, perception and the philosophy of history, from several countries including Greece, Sweden, South Korea, South Africa and the USA.

I sometimes discuss academic stuff on social media. It used to be Twitter until, well you know, but now it is Mastodon.