Richard Pettigrew homepage

Welcome to my homepage! I’m a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, UK.

In my research, I’m interested in the epistemology of uncertain beliefs, the foundations of statistics, social epistemology, decision theory, transformative experience, higher education policy, and the philosophy of mathematics. I have run research projects on epistemic utility theory and the scientific approach to epistemology. See Research link above. I have been interviewed about my research at 3AM, Imperfect Cognitions, and The Reasoner.

I lecture and lead seminars in the philosophy department on everything from Kant’s first Critique, formal epistemology, and logic to philosophy of religion and philosophy of death and illness. For lecture slides and course notes, see Teaching.

I’ve been involved in a number of initiatives to support philosophers from groups that are currently under-represented in the discipline. Here I am with Havi Carel, talking about implicit bias at TEDxUniversityofBristol:

I have been heavily involved in developing and running the University of Bristol’s Foundation Year in Arts and Social Sciences.  This is a one-year introduction to the arts, humanities, and social sciences that prepares students for an undergraduate degree in the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences (see Who are universities for?). Hear some of the students from the first cohort talking about their experience of the programme here:

And here:

I blog a little over at M-Phi, a blog dedicated to mathematical philosophy.

I’m involved in some other organizations and activities. For information about these, see Other.

And see my photos from trips to South Africa, Australia, Tanzania, the US, Scotland, Peru, Japan, and Ecuador here.

My father, Graham Pettigrew, is a retired professor of biochemistry at University of Edinburgh. He has published his teaching materials here.