CURRENT PROJECTS

Philosophy in the Wild – Finding Hope in Mixed Communities (Galway)

This project explores the ethical and philosophical significance of attention to non-charismatic species – such as pigeons, seagulls, bugs, worms, woodlice, rodents, eels, herring – within human-dominated environments. As part of the Philosophy in the Wild initiative, we focus on the overlooked multispecies community of the university campus. Through a series of public philosophy events, reflective practices, and sensory engagements, we aim to challenge anthropocentric perceptions and cultivate attentiveness to the shared lives and entanglements of humans and non-human beings. Drawing on Simone Weil and Mary Midgley, our activities, culminating in a multispecies poetry performance, invites participants to reimagine the campus as a hybrid, co-inhabited space of care, complexity, and hope.

Hidden Depths

Hidden Depths is a climate education project that explores the attitudes underpinning our relationship with water through outreach workshops at Westside Library. The library is helping us recruit one primary school and one active retired community to engage in intergenerational philosophical dialogue.

This project engages both young and older participants with the conceptual and ethical questions underlying water conservation in today’s society. We used the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) approach to explore our relationship with water in creative, reflective ways, emphasising its ubiquitous and precious value.

We delivered the project through a series of interactive workshops designed to spark curiosity by:
i) Sharing philosophical ideas inspired by water;
ii) Supporting participants to discuss the questions raised in a caring and democratic space;
iii) Creating a collective video about water, inspired by the workshops and discussions.

We explored how philosophers have used water as a metaphor, played with figures of speech from different languages and poems, and inquired into philosophical questions such as: Does water have a voice? Why do we struggle to value things that are familiar to us? How can we learn to see water not just as a resource?

This final phase of the project is being carried out in collaboration with a professional video artist.

The project was led by Michela Dianetti with Chiara Li Mandri, Lucy Elvis, and with the help of Nicola Bozzi and Geoff Whitty.

Funded by Sustainability Office, University of Galway in collaboration with Galway Libraries.

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

AIRE

AIRE began as an exploration of how we care for and about others, ourselves, and the environment through philosophical dialogue. What started as a facilitated reading group soon grew to commissioned art, an archival exhibition, and a conference, all grounded in collaborative and creative inquiry.

AIRE was made possible through funding from the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations Award, and was led by Dr Lucy Elvis and Michela Dianetti.

When is Water Not Water?

PI: Dr Lucy Elvis
Postgraduate Researcher: Michela Dianetti
Funder: College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies – Research Development Grant

This Blue Humanities project used the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) to explore our relationship with water — a resource that is both ubiquitous and precious in Galway. Responding to local teachers’ interest in more engaging ways to teach water conservation, the project asked: What is more effective at changing behaviour — information or inspiration?

In collaboration with Knocknacarra Educate Together National School, the project involved campus visits, philosophical dialogues, and creative activities. Students met researchers from across disciplines, reflected on their experiences, and engaged in philosophical inquiry guided by trained facilitators. The project culminated in a student-created book combining original writing and artwork, now part of the Galway County Libraries Schools Collection, complete with a teacher-deliverable lesson plan.

Youth academy

In Spring 2025, Dr Michela Dianetti and PhD candidate Nicola Bozzi, led a Youth Academy course on the Philosophy of Attention. Aimed at young participants, the course introduced key philosophical ideas and fostered thoughtful, collaborative inquiry into the role attention plays in our lives and in the world around us.

Using the P4C methodology, the course encouraged students to generate and explore their own questions through games, stories, and structured dialogue. Topics ranged from digital distraction to friendship, education, art, democracy, and climate change, all seen through the lens of attention as a finite and valuable resource.

The outcome of the course was a collaboratively produced book that brings together the philosophical activities, concepts, and reflections shared across the six sessions, a lasting record of a shared inquiry and an invitation to continue thinking philosophically.

PhnoD

A series of four weekly meetings in November 2024 for PhD researchers. In these meetings, we used the CPI approach to foster collaborative dialogues among young researchers from different disciplines at the University of Galway. 

We had 14 participants from the following disciplines: Sociology, Education, Data Science, Philosophy, Literature, Drama, Languages, Geography, Business, Law, and Digital Humanities.

In the first phase, the activities were focused on each individual researcher’s project, guiding them to transition from their research questions to the philosophical question at the foundation of their research. This process was carried out collaboratively, pairing PhD researchers from completely different areas of study. The last two sessions were dedicated to the entire community, inquiring into two voted questions each time from among the 14 previously formulated questions. These inquiries are set to resume in late February.

This interdisciplinary space provided young researchers not only with fresh perspectives on their own research from their peers, a sense of community and mutual support, and a renewed connection with their research projects and genuine curiosity about those of others, but also with a supportive and caring environment to practise soft skills such as communication, abstraction, and critical thinking on the societal perspectives of their specialised research.

Led by Michela Dianetti, with Nicola Bozzi and Ronan Geraghty.

The project is part of the ‘Critical Thinking in Communities of Inquiry‘, funded by the Insight Research Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute, College of Science and Engineering, University of Galway.