2020–2024

PI: J. Adam Carter; Co-Is: Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion

Funding: Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant RPG-2019-302 (GBP 254,871)

Details here.

Asked why, and under what circumstances, we should trust rather than distrust others, by bringing virtue epistemology to bear on trust: what traits make a good truster, how being a good truster relates to being trustworthy, and how trusting well helps build resilient trust networks. Main outputs include Carter's monograph A Telic Theory of Trust (Oxford University Press, 2024), more than twenty articles and chapters, three online workshops in 2020–21, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the ethics and epistemology of trust. Postdocs: Emma C. Gordon and Angela O'Sullivan; PhD student: Ísak Andri Ólafsson.

2021–2025

PIs: Christoph Kelp; Anne Meylan (Zurich)

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (GBP 480,000)

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Explored a novel, unified account of how knowledge, understanding and evidence relate to each other, in two subprojects: whether what we come to know and understand contributes to our stock of evidence and the role it plays in inquiry, and whether understanding is best conceived as a body of comprehensive, well-connected knowledge. Postdoc: Miloud Belkoniene; PhD student: Alexander Belak.

2018-2019

PI: Mona Simion

Funding: Mind Research Fellowship (GBP 23,000);

Details here.

Developed a knowledge-first functionalist account of epistemic normativity of belief, assertion, and reasoning.

2022–2026

PI: J. Adam Carter; Co-I: Jesper Kallestrup (Aberdeen)

Funding: AHRC Research Grant AH/W008424/1 (GBP 809,759)

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Examined how epistemology should respond to a world in which we offload and outsource cognitive work to our devices and to the internet: what turns digitally stored information into digital knowledge, whether there are distinctively digital epistemic virtues, and how to educate for them. Outputs include Carter's Digital Knowledge: A Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2024), the Online Virtue mini-course, the Digital Knowledge podcast, yearly workshops in Glasgow and Aberdeen, and an impact workshop with educators and policymakers. Postdocs: Giada Fratantonio and Joshua Thorpe; PhD student: Edoardo Cavasin (Aberdeen).

2022–2026

PI: Neil Levy (Oxford); Co-I: J. Adam Carter

Funding: AHRC Research Grant AH/W005077/1 (GBP 791,933)

Details here.

Asked how we can remain intellectually self-governing while depending on the expertise of others, treating autonomy as something scaffolded by our social and technological environment rather than as independence from it. Its main output is Carter and Levy's How We Govern Our Minds Through Others: Epistemic Autonomy Beyond the Myth of Independence (MIT Press, 2026). Postdocs: Matthew Vermaire and Oscar Piedrahita.

2017-2019
PIs: Adam Carter and Christoph Kelp
Funding: the British Academy

(GBP 10,000)
The New Directions in Social Epistemology British Academy speaker series ran over two academic years: 2017-18 and 2018-19, and operated in three phases, each corresponding with a particular subtheme in social epistemology, including (i) ‘Foundational Issues in Social Epistemology’; (ii) 'Social Epistemology: Epistemic Norms' (iii) 'Social Epistemology and Groups'.