Deakin Philosophy Honours students Liam Kelly and Arianna Wright did our Program proud last week at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Honours Symposium.

Liam’s presentation was entitled, “For the Love of the Language-Game: An Inferentialist Response to the Post-Truth Condition”. Arianna’s presentation was entitled,  “Critical Minerals, Critical Consent: The Role of Pluralism in Securing Minority Rights.” 

Both presentations generated lively questions from the floor, which the students expertly answered. Congratulations to Liam and Arianna for passing this important milestone with flying colours!

On Tuesday April 28th 2026, 16 undergraduates, HDRs, staff, and visitors gathered at Deakin’s Burwood campus and online for our first Deakin Minorities in Philosophy event.

Organised by A/Prof Cathy Legg, the event began by discussing what it means to be a ‘minority in philosophy’. How should we identify ‘the minoritized’, and what should be done in response? Attendees explored some ways in which minority status might be context-dependent, and paradoxically embedded in the mainstream of our discipline’s self-conception.

Dr. Helen Ngo then presented a snapshot of her current research, entitled “On diasporic place-worlds and the im/possibilities of home”, followed by a rich Q & A.

We extend a huge thank you to everyone who attended, to Dr. Helen Ngo for her excellent presentation, as well as to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and to PHIRES (formerly PHI) for their support. We hope to hold some further events this year. If you are interested in keeping updated with the network and its events, or joining the mailing list, please email A/Prof Cathy Legg for further details at c.legg@deakin.edu.au.

Earlier this month A/Prof Patrick Stokes and A/Prof Cathy Legg presented to state high school students at the Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) in South Yarra on the topic of fallacies and conspiracy theories.

CHES is a government funded centre for secondary school students which aims “to inspire the full intellectual, social, and emotional development of high-ability senior secondary students through a suite of programs that stretch, challenge, and enhance their learning.” You can find out more about them here.

Last week the School of Humanities and Social Sciences presented prizes to our high-achieving undergraduate students for the previous year.

Congratulations to Lucas Pfeiffer on winning the Charlesworth Philosophy Prize, and to Rory Ansori for winning the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics prize!

Deakin’s Dr Cathy Legg, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, recently sat down with David Rutledge from ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone for a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion of the post-truth condition, epistemology in the modern context, getting people to care about the truth, and how the tradition of American Pragmatism can help us get past the ‘post-truth moment.’

You can listen to the program here, on the ABC Listen App, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In  December 2024, Deakin hosted the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference at  our Waterfront campus in Geelong. Deakin’s Dr Cathy Legg, along with Deakin graduate Dr Vincent Le, organised a stream on Wilfrid Sellars and the renewed interest in his work among continental philosophers.

This became the subject of a new episode of ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone, featuring Cathy, Vince, and several other excellent philosophers from Australia, the US, and Greece. The episode is presented and produced by Deakin’s A/Prof Patrick Stokes.

You can listen to the program here or via the ABC Listen App, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In Episode 10 of Deakinstruction, Tim Deane-Freeman talks to Meg McCamley and Tim Neal about his new book , which places Deleuze’s philosophy in dialogue with both cinema and the concept of information. In this context, they discuss philosophy, film, TV and social control, and the broader challenge of embracing a kind of thought which eschews recognition in order to confront the radically new. Tim Deane-Freeman is a sessional lecturer in philosophy at Deakin, and Meg McCamley and Tim Neal are both Deakin PhD candidates.

Deakin Philosophy’s Dr Cathy Legg has just published a piece in The Conversation, titled “Your world is different from a pigeon’s – but a new theory explains how we can still live in the same reality“:

As we explain it, reality is grasped through pragmatic agreement. This means individuals align their expectations about what others will do in similar lived situations. […] This highlights a key characteristic of pragmatist philosophy. It does not define cognition as a kind of consciousness, an idea that has led to apparently insoluble philosophical problems. Rather, pragmatists view knowledge of reality as implicit in what we can do, most especially what we can do with others.

The article is based on Dr Legg and André Sant’Anna’s newly-published paper in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, “Pragmatic Realism: Towards a Reconciliation of Enactivism and Realism” (Open Access), which argues for a Peircean model of inquiry-based enactivist realism, which makes the investigation of other species’ minds possible. 

The Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy provides a broad intellectual forum for scholars working within or in communication with continental philosophy and European philosophical traditions. We welcome proposals for papers, panels and streams from scholars working in any discipline, from diverse backgrounds, and at any stage of their career. 

The 2024 annual conference will be held at Deakin University (Geelong Waterfront) from the 2nd to the 4th of December. There will also be options for online participation.

Keynote Speakers:

• Camisha Russell (University of Oregon)
• Laura Roberts (Flinders University)
• Massimiliano Tomba (UC Santa Cruz)

Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 July. 

Conference fees, including Registration and Conference Dinner tickets are listed here
Registrations will open in the coming months.

For more details, as well as submission guidelines, please go to www.ascp.org.au/conference

All queries about the conference should be sent to conference@ascp.org.au