Department

There are around eighty employees at the Department of Philosophy and just over two hundred and fifty students, working either in the most ancient academic discipline of philosophy or in one of the most recent, cognitive science. The department's programmes have a good reputation and our research is of the highest quality, with internationally recognised and in some fields leading researchers. In comparison with other departments within the humanities, we are quite a large department, but not so large that students, employees and department management cannot meet often and informally. Separate undergraduate and Master's programmes, as well as research programmes, are offered by the divisions of Practical Philosophy and Theoretical Philosophy. The Division of Cognitive Science offers Master’s and research studies programmes. In addition, we have shorter free-standing courses linked to philosophy and cognitive science. With regard to the focus of research and education, the divisions are largely autonomous but there is also increasingly close collaboration between them, not least among researchers and doctoral students.

From an organisational point of view, the Department of Philosophy is part of the History-Philosophy section, under the Faculty of Humanities and Theology. From the point of view of content, both philosophy and cognitive science are inter-faculty disciplines. In education and research, we cooperate with subjects and groups in many other departments and faculties in Sweden and internationally. Approximately half of our students start their academic studies in philosophy straight after upper secondary school; the rest choose to complement other programmes with philosophy or cognitive science at a later stage. The most common motivation for choosing our subjects is that the student is genuinely interested in philosophical or cognitive science issues and wishes to improve his or her analytical abilities and capacity for critical thinking.