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Some recent PhD graduates in Philosophy from The Open University Stephen Watt, PhD (Open) 1998 Since graduating Stephen has been combining looking after his three young sons with teaching at the Open University as an associate lecturer on a number of philosophy courses and with lecturing and tutoring at the University of Edinburgh. His main research interests remain in the field of ethics and political philosophy, with particular reference to ancient philosophy, but he is also interested in a number of areas in the philosophy of religion. A list of Stephen’s publications is available here. Stephen writes: “Research at the Open University was a formative period for me. It allowed me to return to philosophy and changed both my understanding of the subject and of much of my own life. I was fortunate to have as supervisors two marvellous people who, in very different ways, supported my research and have continued to support me in my subsequent career. The Open University is already an acknowledged leader in undergraduate education in the UK; my own experience as a philosophy postgraduate makes me think that its role in postgraduate research should be given much more credit than it currently receives.” David Edmonds, PhD (Open) 2003 David is a frustrated philosopher whose day job is to make radio documentaries for the BBC, several of which have won awards. His favourite programme was entitled, Can God can make a breakfast so big He can’t eat it? He has co-written three books with John Eidinow including the best-seller Wittgenstein’s Poker – short-listed for the Guardian First Book award, and for which Bill Clinton acted as unpaid promoter; Bobby Fischer Goes To War, about the most notorious chess match of all time, and Rousseau’s Dog about the violent clash between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. His Open University PhD, Caste Wars, was published by Routledge in 2006. David has undergraduate and graduate philosophy degrees from Oxford University and has held fellowships at the universities of Chicago and Michigan. He lives in London. A short abstract of David’s thesis is available here. David writes: “I spent about six years studying for my PhD. I had two supervisors. Janet Radcliffe Richards (external) and Jon Pike (internal). They were a wonderful philosophical Jack and Mrs Sprat – Janet specialised in ethics, Jon in political theory; Janet was invaluable on the big questions, Jon superb on the detail. I was in full time employment, and would ring Jon or Janet up whenever I’d found time to do some writing or thinking. The Open University is an extraordinary institution and my experience was overwhelmingly positive. The standard of teaching and commitment to students puts universities with grander pretensions to shame. I’d recommend the Open University to anyone.” David Knott, PhD (Open) 2006 David writes: “Combining research and a job was often difficult, but as with my first degree, I found that the Open University understands the demands on part-time students well, and provides a strong network of support and guidance. I was fortunate to get on very well with my supervisors, both internal (from the Open University) and external (from Birkbeck College, London), and benefited from their different perspectives on my work as well as from their guidance, expertise and inspiration throughout my research. Bringing a thesis to a close and maintaining momentum towards its end can both be hard, but I found that a combination of gentle pressure and persistent critical scrutiny from my supervisors helped me reach a successful conclusion.” Other successful research projects Other theses successfully submitted for research degrees in the Department include: 'The Sublime Machine: Conceptions of Masculine Beauty, 1750-1850' (PhD 1996). 'Wittgensteinian Descriptivism and Concepts of Self-Renunciation' (PhD 1997). 'Aristotle's View of Human Nature as the Basis for Ethical Theory' (PhD 1999). 'Nihilism and Modernity' (PhD 1999). 'Philosophy of Mind and Neurological Impairment' (PhD 1999). 'A Comparison of Hegel's early Theological Writings with his Mature Philosophy of Religion' (MPhil 1999). 'The Ethics of Debt Management' (MPhil 2000). 'Action and Ethics in Aristotle and Hegel' (PhD 2001). « back to Postgraduate Study in Philosophy at The Open University
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Having graduated with a First Class MA in philosophy from the University of St Andrews in 1985, Stephen spent eight years in the intellectual wilderness of Chartered Accountancy where he ended up working as a tax planner for what was then Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte. Increasingly dispirited by this work – and resisting the temptation of lion taming! – Stephen decided to start a part-time BPhil by research with the Open University on Aristotle’s ethics, with the ultimate aim of using this to get a PhD place at a conventional university. By the time he had completed the requirements for the BPhil, however, he realized that not only did he want to develop the research topic he was working on into a PhD, but that he very much wanted to keep working with his Open University supervisors – Rosalind Hursthouse (then of the Open University and now of the University of Auckland) and Willie Charlton (now retired from the University of Edinburgh). And so he went on to complete the PhD with the Open University in 1998. His thesis was titled Aristotle’s view of human nature as a basis for ethical theory and its external examiners were Julia Annas of the University of Arizona and Dominic Scott of the University of Cambridge. 
David undertook his PhD as a part-time research student over a period of six years while working full time. Having completed his PhD, he continues working full time, but is also planning to continue philosophical research, some of which will develop ideas proposed in his thesis, and some of which will consider areas of interest which could not fit within the thesis. He feels that his time with the Open University has given him the skills, confidence and experience to pursue these independently.