New Research Fellows in Department of Philosophy

Claudio Ternullo has taken up the position of Research Fellow of Theoretical Philosophy on the 1st of September, 2019.

He obtained a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool (2012). Afterwards, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic, University of Vienna. Ternullo has conducted research in the Philosophy of Mathematics, in particular, on mathematical platonism, new axioms, the set-theoretic multiverse and the problem of justification. He has also conducted research in Ancient Philosophy (on Platonism and the platonic tradition in the Middle Ages).

In Tartu, he will be conducting further research on these topics, and will also contribute both to the research and the teaching activities in the areas pertaining to the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy (especially, Logic and Metaphysics). He is the author of several specialised articles and of a co-authored (with Carolin Antos, Sy-David Friedman and Radek Honzik) monograph (The Hyperuniverse Project and Maximality, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2018).

For more about Claudio's work, see his website.

The professorship is supported by the University of Tartu ASTRA Project PER ASPERA, financed by the European Regional Development Fund.


James S. Pearson has recently taken up the position of Research Fellow in Practical Philosophy. James moves from Leiden University, where he has been working as a Lecturer in Philosophy since 2017. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University in 2018 with a dissertation that examined Nietzsche’s conception of conflict (Kampf). This research critically assessed Nietzsche's claim that social and psychological conflict are necessary preconditions of human flourishing.

In addition to his research in Nietzsche studies, James has published work on the notion of disagreement in contemporary democratic theory. In Tartu he will be analysing the concept of political exclusion, critically assessing the idea (defended by various political theorists) that exclusionary processes (e.g. enforcing immigration quotas) are in some way intrinsic to the functioning body politic. He co-edited (with Herman Siemens) the volume Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche’s Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2018), and has published numerous articles on the theme of conflict (in journals such as The Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Inquiry, and Social Theory and Practice).

Funding was provided by the European Regional Development Fund and the programme Mobilitas Pluss (MOBJD403)

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