Erin Plunkett

I hold a PhD in Philosophy and Modern Languages from Royal Holloway University of London and have 10 years of teaching experience in Literature, Philosophy, and ESOL at university level. Additionally, for the past four years, I have been tutoring at-risk youth, students with learning disabilities, and GCSE and A-level students in RE, English, and French. 

My research is motivated by questions about the relationship of form to thought, particularly how genre and style inform what philosophy is able to say and what is considered philosophically relevant. Within this, I am particularly concerned with the dynamic between inherited forms and human freedom, and in the ethical questions involved in communication. My  Ph.D. thesis is a genre study of the essay as a performative and therapeutic response to philosophical scepticism. 

My interests fall somewhere between Philosophy and Literature, with a methodology that is informed by phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory. I have a particular interest in 19th-century German idealism and Romanticism, Kierkegaard and existentialism, and the work of Stanley Cavell. Other research interests include: European Romanticisms, philosophy of religion, philosophical approaches to literature, and performance studies. 

My non-academic professional experience centres on responses to climate change in civil society, particularly the development of environmentally and socially responsible business models.

2017-2018     VISITING LECTURER IN PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICHESTER

• Course topics: History of Ideas: Greeks to Post-modernity (2-term module); Quest for Truth: Phenomenology and Science; Advanced Issues in Ethics

2012-2018     LECTURER AND TEACHING ASSISTANT IN PHILOSOPHY, ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

• Course topics: Philosophy and the Arts; Introduction to Philosophy; Introduction to Modern Philosophy; Kant and Hegel; 19th-Century Critiques of Idealism; Mind and World; Aesthetics and Morals

2008-2009      MAÎTRE-ASSISTANT, UNIVERSITY OF PARIS NANTERRE (France)

• English (ESOL), Cultural Studies, Ethics, Psychology for undergraduate and Master’s students

2006-2008     ASSOCIATE INSTRUCTOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, INDIANA UNIVERSITY (USA)

• Course topics: Media, Technology and Identity; Literature of the Uncanny; Gender Construction in Western Literature; Literature of the Bible; Introduction to Popular Culture: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Eating

2005-06        VISITING TEACHING ASSISTANT, HEC PARIS (France)

• Lectures on the American education system and Anglophone culture and literature

2004-05        TEACHING ASSISTANT IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

• Course topics: Introduction to Christianity; Religion, Ethics, and Public Life

2003-04        ASSOCIATE INSTRUCTOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

• Course Topics: Love in the Western Literary Tradition; Literature and Deception