Birkbeck, University of London is delighted to announce the 2025 Edgington Lectures, which will be given by Dr. Stacie Friend (University of Edinburgh) on 14-15 May 2025.

Dr Friend’s lectures are entitled “Fiction and Reality.” An abstract is enclosed below.

I have argued elsewhere that it is a mistake to reduce the distinction between works of fiction and non-fiction — between, for example, novels/short stories/fiction films, and histories/biographies/documentaries — to a distinction between fiction on the one hand and fact or reality on the other. Instead, I maintain that works of fiction, like works of non-fiction, are about the real world, though they ask us to imagine the world differently from how it actually is. In these talks I develop the implications of this view for the significance of fiction. Why do we care about people who never existed and events that never occurred? How can their stories shed light on our lives and the world around us? I argue that answering these questions requires understanding the ways in which works of fiction presuppose a basis in ordinary facts, and I use this idea to explain why works of fiction matter to us.

Call for abstracts: Graduate Workshop

We invite graduate students and recent graduates ((1 year since completing study) to submit abstracts for presentations addressing any aspect of Dr Friend’s work, including but not limited to:


- Philosophy of Fiction

- Philosophy of Literature and Film

- Aesthetics

- The intersection between Aesthetics, Philosophy of Language and Philosophy of Mind

Submission Instructions

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words and be suitable for a 30-minute presentation. Abstracts should be prepared for blind review. Please do not include any identifying information in the body of the abstract. Please include the following information in the email: paper title, author name, institutional affiliation, and student status. Abstracts should be saved in .pdf or .doc format. Send all submissions to: r.elliott@bbk.ac.uk and iromer04@student.bbk.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is Friday 13th December 2024 5 pm GMT. Applicants should expect to hear back by the 31st of January 2025.

Birkbeck College is a participating member of the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme, and steps will be taken to ensure gender balance among workshop participants. To this end, we particularly encourage submissions from women and other under-represented groups in philosophy.

The Edgington Lectures are public lectures inaugurated by the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. As part of the new School of Historical Studies, philosophers at Birkbeck are proud to continue with the Lectures. Previous Edgington Lectures were given by Catherine Elgin (2023), Katherine Hawley (2018), Kit Fine (2016), Rae Langton (2014) and John McDowell (2012).

Attendance to the lectures is free and open to all, but we kindly ask that you register in advance. Details of the lectures, graduate workshops and registration will be available in due course. Further details about Dr Friend’s work can be found on her departmental website.