Nikk Effingham
Dept. of Philosophy
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT
Tel: +44 121 414 7246
Fax: +44 121 414 8453
N.Effingham@bham.ac.uk

I am a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, teaching courses on metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. I work on theoretical philosophy, concentrating mainly on metaphysics, with a sideline in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind. Here is my curriculum vitae.

I worked for several years as a teaching assistant at the University of Leeds whilst I was a postgraduate. Before finishing my thesis I moved to the University of Glasgow for a one year temporary contract, teaching the philosophy of science and metaphysics. When that contract expired I moved to the University of Birmingham, who took me on permanently.

My research has previously focused on mereology, persistence, supersubstantivalism, vagueness, time travel and the philosophy of groups. I am presently researching:

• General issues in ontology. Currently I am trying to resurrect mereological nominalism about properties and investigating Pythagoreanism (the thesis that everything is a mathematical object).
• The philosophy of location (I'm hoping to convince everyone to start calling it 'chorology'). I am focusing on the location of properties; how chorology dovetails with mereology; the differences between atemporal chorology and temporally relativised chorology; and how certain chorological systems look set to solve problems in the philosophy of religion (such as the atemporality of God and problems surrounding the Incarnation).
• The philosophy of closed timelike curves. I'm hoping to write a monograph on the subject during my research leave next year.
• Whether talk of 'fundamentality', 'ontological dependence', 'really existing' etc. is bankrupt and, if it isn't, what sense to make of it.
• I am also writing an introduction to ontology for upper level undergraduates. It is under contract and will be published by Polity in 2012.
• If I get any spare time I want to do some work on aesthetics (specifically the varieties of indeterminate truth in fiction, and how tabletop role-playing games bear on issues in aesthetics) and the philosophy of mind (specifically whether 'reduction' makes any sense or is instead some neoscholastic gibberish, and the Zombie argument).

In my spare time I am an unmitigated geek. I'm comfortable with that. On that note, this is my academic webpage, so if you are looking for my long standing personal gaming page then click here.