Professor David Oderberg

Responsibilities:Director of Postgraduate Studies (Semester 1)

Areas of interest

My chief area of research is contemporary metaphysics. I have special interests in moral philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas.
I am the author of The Metaphysics of Good and Evil (Routledge, 2020), Opting Out (IEA, 2018),Real Essentialism (Routledge, 2007),Moral Theory (Blackwell, 2000),Applied Ethics (Blackwell, 2000), andThe Metaphysics of Identity over Time (Palgrave, 1993). I am currently writing a book on philosophy of biology for Springer, to appear in 2026.
In addition, I am: editor of Classifying Reality (Blackwell, 2012); editor of Form and Matter: Themes in Contemporary Metaphysics (Blackwell, 1999); The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers (MIT Press, 2005); co-editor of Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (Palgrave, 1997); and co-editor of Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural Law (Palgrave, 2004).

I usually supervise around five PhD students, mainly in my areas of expertise. I am happy to supervise doctoral research students in the following areas: metaphysics, Aristotle, Aquinas, ethics, philosophy of religion.

Modules I teach have included Society and State in Ancient Greece, Metaphysics, and God, Time and Freedom.

I am the editor of Ratio, an international journal of analytic philosophy, and on the editorial boards of Metaphysica and Studia Neo-Aristotelica.
From 2021-2024 I was Principal Investigator on a major research project entitled ‘Mistakes in Living Systems: A New Conceptual Framework for the Study of Purpose in Biology’, bringing together scientists and philosophers at Reading, and funded by the John Templeton Foundation’s global research programme ‘Agency, Directionality, and Function’.