Giuseppina Doro

Biography

Giuseppina D’Oro joined Keele in 1994 having received a PhD from the university of Essex. She retired in 2025 to dedicate herself full time to her research. She was director of undergraduate studies from 1998 to 2003, a role she resumed at various junctures during her 30 years career at Keele. In 2002 she led the reconfiguration of Philosophy with the School of Politics, Philosophy and International Relations (SPIRE) which became the home of Philosophy for almost two decades. She was one of the founding members of the Forum for Philosophical Research under whose aegis all research activities in Philosophy have henceforth been conducted. In 2008 she established the Philosophy pathway in the MRes Humanities. She was the discipline coordinator for the MRes programme from its inception in 2008 till 2017. She was the first Philosophy pathway lead for the AHRC Northwestern Consortium, which enabled many students to win competitive PhD studentships. In 2012-14 she took on the role of Director of Postgraduate Studies for the Masters in Politics and International Relations and led the restructuring of the MRes in Politics and International Relations and introduced the January intake for Masters students, which set a precedent for all other masters. In 2012-13

Between 2016 and 2020 she a was a member of the AHRC Peer Review panel as well as acting as reviewer for other funding bodies. Over the years she has acted as external assessor for the review of undergraduate teaching and as external examiner on both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at various institutions.

She continues to be an executive member of the Journal of the Philosophy of History and is currently a Guest Researcher in the Centre for the Philosophical Studies of History at the University of Oulu Finland.

For her research outputs see the research tab.

Research and scholarship

Giuseppina D’Oro’s research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy of the human sciences, action, mind and history. She has engaged with the rise of scientism in Why Collingwood Matters: a Defence of Humanistic Understanding (Bloomsbury 2023) and in several papers including “‘The past’ is an ambiguous expression” (Routledge 2025), “The Sense of the Past: Williams and Collingwood on humanistic and scientific knowledge” (OUP 2025 with James Connelly) and “Scientism, pseudoscience and the territorial distinction between humanistic and scientific knowledge” (Society 2025). She has written extensively on the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood in the context of contemporary debates in the philosophy of action, science and metaphilosophy. Her first monograph Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience was completed thanks to and AHRB research fellowship and the second Why Collingwood Matters, was (belatedly) completed thanks to an AHRC research fellowship. She is the author of numerous papers exploring the metaphilosophical assumptions of contemporary non-reductivism challenging the naturalistic platform from which they are launched. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (CUP 2017, with Sorn Overgaard), of Collingwood on Philosophical Methodology (Palgrave 2018, with Stephen Leach and Karim Dharamsi), of Reasons and Causes: Causalism and anti-causalism in the philosophy of action (Palgrave 2013, with Constantine Sandis) and of the re-edition of Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford 2005, with James Connelly).

She is currently a Guest Researcher at the Centre for the Philosophical Studies of History at the University of Oulu, Finland and an executive member of the Journal of the Philosophy of History.

Teaching

• Moral Philosophy
• Epistemology and Metaphysics I
• Epistemology and Metaphysics II
• Great Philosophers of the Twentieth Century
• Philosophy Dissertation (module convenor)
• Metaphilosophy (MRes Humanities- Philosophy) module convenor

PhD Supervision

I will be very happy to supervise dissertations in the areas of the philosophy of action, history and social science (especially on the nature of action explanation), in metaphilosophy (on issues such as the role and character of philosophical analysis and the relation between philosophy and other disciplines), Idealism and Collingwood Studies.

Please see my research and scholarship tab for more details about my area of expertise.

Further information is available about studying in SPIRE, including funding available for pursuing a doctoral research degree.