Research
My research primarily concerns the metaphysics and epistemology of perceptual experience, focusing in particular upon:
the nature and role of perceptual experience and content
multisensory perception and the individuation of the senses
the spatiotemporal structure of experience across different sensory modalities.
All of these themes were combined in my Synchronising the Senses project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation via the University of Cambridge’s New Directions in the Study of the Mind initiative.
Research projects
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher on the Perceiving Representations project at the University of Oslo, where I conduct empirically-informed research in the metaphysics of perception and temporal structure of experience.
I was a collaborator on the Perceiving Properties in a World of Objects project, based at the University of Oxford (2019–2021), and a postdoc on the Rethinking the Senses project at the University of Glasgow (2014–2017).
In 2017, I was awarded John Templeton Foundation research funding via the University of Cambridge’s New Directions in the Study of the Mind initiative for a project on the temporal structure of experience, which continues to form a central focus of my research.
In addition to my other publications, I co-edited a special issue of the journal Topoi on the subject of Perception Without Representation with Roberta Locatelli of the University of Tübingen, and am co-author of the Oxford Bibliographies entry on the senses with Fiona Macpherson.
My PhD thesis argued that constraints upon our ability to recognise the contents of our experience rule out many apparently plausible accounts of experiential content and phenomenal character, i.e. what perceptual experience is subjectively like, the central argument from which is summarised in my paper on ‘Are the Senses Silent? Travis’s Argument from Looks’.
Other interests
My other research interests include:
philosophy of psychology and cognitive science
epistemology, particularly of perception
the metaphysics and consciousness of time and temporal passage (on which I wrote my MLitt dissertation)
the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid, on whose account of visual perception I have published in The Philosophical Quarterly.