Contact us

Please check with you academic staff when they hold their office hours.

Please check with your teaching assistants where and when they hold their office hours.

• Head of Department: Graham Stevens (graham.p.stevens@manchester.ac.uk)
• SoSS Student Support Hub (soss.hub@manchester.ac.uk)

Visit the Academic staff page to find further details of teaching and research staff within Philosophy. 

… something related to a particular course unit?

Talk to the course convenor (or, if the course unit is team-taught, to the lecturer who covered the relevant topic) – or, if tutorials are taken by a TA, you might like to talk to them instead. It's up to you. Feel free to talk to them about any aspect of the course unit, whether you're stuck on some reading or can't answer one of the tutorial questions or want to run a plan for an essay by them, or you just want to talk about some philosophical thoughts you've had.

… a concern about the teaching on my course?

The most obvious person to talk to would be the course convenor (if your concern relates to a TA or another lecturer on that course unit). You can also talk to your academic adviser or the Head of Philosophy, Graham Stevens. Or you can raise the issue with the relevant student rep, so that they can take it up on your behalf; you should be able to find a list of this year's philosophy reps on the Philosophy Hub.

… my performance in an essay or exam?

The best person to speak to in the first instance is always the person who marked it. For exams, you can assume that that was the course convenor. For first- and second-year essays it will normally have been your TA. If you have more general concerns – e.g. you would like to improve your marks in general – your academic advisor would be your best bet.

… possible postgraduate study in philosophy?

Talk to your academic adviser, or the Postgraduate Admissions Team (pg-soss@manchester.ac.uk) if you’re interested in the MA Philosophy, or contact the MA director: emily.caddickbourne@manchester.ac.uk.

… an administrative query?

You might want to know about mitigations procedures, a deadline, etc. For general queries, please go to the School undergraduate office on the ground floor of the Arthur Lewis Building.

For philosophy-related queries, please contact Julie Heynes (julieann.heynes@manchester.ac.uk) in the UG office. But do please check that the information isn’t already provided in your course guide or your undergraduate handbook first!

For IT-related queries (e.g. problems with Blackboard, email, etc.), please contact the IT helpdesk via MyManchester.

Our basic purpose is to help you with the academic side of your life at university in whatever way we can.

It might just be as a first port of call because you aren’t sure who you need to talk to, or you might want to discuss your choice of courses or dissertation topic next year, or you might be considering further study in philosophy. Or you might have general worries about speaking up in tutorials or giving presentations or your essay or exam performance.

Your academic advisor is also a good person to ask for a reference, since they will be able to look at information about your performance across all your philosophy courses (e.g. essay feedback sheets, attendance records, etc.). Basically we are here to help, so make use of us!