This project is funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant (no. 101169707) and aims to rethink narratives about eighteenth-century British moral philosophy, which to the present day continue to focus predominantly on male authors, despite overwhelming evidence that women participated in the moral debates of this period.
The project will analyse a large corpus that is inclusive of moral writings by male and female authors and will shed new light on the intellectual networks in which male and female philosophers interacted. By bringing together computational digital humanities research with traditional philosophical methods of close reading and interpretation the project intends to overcome the marginalisation of women philosophers in histories of British moral philosophy and to advance methodological approaches to the history of philosophy.
Find out more about our project team members below.
Ruth Boeker is a Professor in the UCD School of Philosophy. She received her PhD from the University of St Andrews and held academic positions in the USA and Australia before moving to Dublin. She is an expert in Early Modern philosophy and has published widely on late 17th and 18th-Century British philosophy.
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Suchana Datta is a Postdoctoral Researcher on the BMoral project and was previously associated with the ERC VICTEUR project. She completed her PhD in UCD at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Her research activities span information retrieval, machine learning, and cultural analytics.
More details will be provided when the position has been filled. The position has been advertised with a preferred start date of 1st February 2026.
More details will be provided when the position has been filled. We will advertise the position in early 2026 with a preferred start date of 1st September 2026.
More details coming soon. The PhD Candidate will start in January 2026.
Silvia Di Girolamo contributes to the BMoral project by taking care of the transcription of unpublished manuscripts. She holds a Bachelor degree in Modern Philology from the University of Padua and a Master’s degree in Archives and Records Management from UCD.
Seán Fenton Cooney is engaged in the digital humanities research of the BMoral project. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Medical Humanities at Trinity College Dublin. Over the past two years, he has worked as a Research Assistant at UCD on projects conducted in collaboration with Justice for Magdalenes Research and the UCD School of Education.
Paddi brings extensive expertise in programme and project management, with particular experience in EU and ERC projects at both Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy. Paddi holds PRINCE2 and PMP project management certifications, as well as a Master’s in Arts Policy from the University of Galway.
Project start date
ERC BMoral Project LaunchFurther Information
Workshop – Further details TBA
Project end date
This project is funded by the European Union (ERC, BMoral, 101169707). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the participants only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
UCD Philosophy is ranked among the Top 100 Departments of Philosophy worldwide (QS World University Rankings 2017, 2018, 2021, 2023–2025)