Assoc ProfessorDanielle Petherbridge

Associate Professor in Philosophy

Director, UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life (http://www.ucd.ie/cepl/)

Deputy-Head, School of Philosophy 2022-2023

Prior to my permanent position in Philosophy at UCD, I was an IRC Marie-Curie international research fellow in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University, New York, and an IRC postdoctoral fellow in Philosophy at University College Dublin.

I specialise in European Philosophy, with a specific focus on phenomenology and social philosophy, and the intersections between them in relation to theories of self/personhood and intersubjectivity. Most of my recent publications have focused on phenomenology and critical phenomenology (particularly Husserl, affect, attention and perception) and social philosophy (particularly recognition, vulnerability, trust, Honneth and epistemic recognition). In my work in applied phenomenology I have focused on research into dementia and vulnerabilities in aging. I am working on two book projects: one, on attention, affection and perception entitled 'When is One Recognizable?'; two, a book entitled 'Encountering the Other', which provides an examination of theories of intersubjectivity specifically in social philosophy and phenomenology.

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I generally work in the following three key areas, and I am happy to accept inquires for PhD supervision and from potential Postdoctoral Fellows who wish to apply for IRC Fellowships in the following and related areas:

(1) Phenomenology and Critical Phenomenology: particularly Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, intersubjectivity, empathy, affect, attention, habit, and perception.

(2) Social Philosophy/Critical Theory: particularly Honneth, recognition theory, vulnerability, trust, epistemic recognition.

(3) Applied Phenomenology, Ethics and Medical Humanities, with key projects on:

> Phenomenology and Dementia (with an IRC funded project on Embodied-Cognitive accounts of dementia, self and personhood in dementia and related illnesses).

> Phenomenology of gender violence in conflict zones (I am a senior staff member on the ERC funded project Gender, Conflict and Coercive Control: A Feminist Phenomenological Expansion of Conflict-related Harm, PI Professor Aisling Swaine).

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I have had the pleasure of supervising or continue to supervise the following PhD students:

- Laura Jane Nanni, The Porosity of the Husserlian Self (completed)

- Jonathan Wren, Registers of Plurality: Freedom and the Question of Being-With (completed)

- Bianca Cataldi, Labour and Factory Utopias: Olivettian Writers and Testimonial Intent (co-supervised with Ursula Fanning) (completed)

- Alessandro Guardascione, Values and Selfhood in Psychopathology. A Phenomenological Account (completed) 

- Federico Carlassara, Phenomenology of Dementia: Remembrance, Memory and Corporeality (Co-Tutelle with University of Palermo) 

- Roxane Pret Théodore, Rethinking Political Organisation from a Feminist Standpoint Politicising an Ethics of Care and Vulnerability (current)

- Samuel Ferns, The Critique of Knowledge: Reflexive Stages in a Critical Social Theory (current)

- Denise Kelly, What About Phobias? A Phenomenological Investigation of Phobias (current)


I am an Editor of the philosophy journal Critical Horizons, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Contemporary Continental Ethics (Edinburgh), and a co-founder of Health, Ethics and Narrative Ireland. I was previously an Expert Reviewer in Medical Humanities for the Wellcome Trust (UK) and a team member of the EU Funded Horizon 2020 grant Policy, Expertise and Trust (PERITIA).

I am creator and co-founder of the International and Irish Young Philosopher Awards (www.youngphilosopherawards.ucd.ie). The inaugural IYPA Festival was held in 2018 and the initiative was launched by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins in 2017.