Staff profile

Office Hours

Currently on research leave.

Research

I’m a historian of philosophy, focusing on seventeenth to early twentieth century metaphysics. Much of my work concerns time and space, but I’m also interested in substance, change, idealism, process, emergentism, personal identity, and philosophical questions about travel. I like digging out the work of rich but under-studied figures, including women philosophers who have traditionally been neglected in the history of philosophy.

Two of my monographs are scholarly: Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics (2018, Oxford University Press) considers seventeenth century time theories; whilst Victoria Welby (2023, Cambridge University Press) offers the first study of Welby’s metaphysics. My trade book, The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad (2020, Oxford University Press), explores philosophical issues around travel, from the “Age of Discovery” to the present day, including maps, climate change, and wilderness. It’s been widely reviewed - see for example The Wall Street Journal.

I have edited two collections: Early Modern Women on Metaphysics (2018, Cambridge University Press); and the special issue Time at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in American-British Philosophy (2023, British Journal for the History of Philosophy).

In 2020, I won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for excellence in research. My earlier work has been supported by a Netherlands Research Council “Veni”, a John Templeton Foundation stipend, and a British Academy “Rising Star” grant. I currently hold an AHRC Leaders Fellowship, to investigate 1880s-1930s British metaphysics of time. Does the present move? Is the future real? Why and how did philosophers become so worried about these questions?

I am committed to getting philosophy out beyond the academy. You can listen to me talking about Bergson and time on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time; and about travel on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week. My writing has appeared in magazines such as Aeon, History Today, and The Conversation. I tweet regularly about philosophy @emilytwrites

Previously, I studied for my PhD at the University of Cambridge, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Groningen. I sit on editorial or advisory boards for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, the journal Analysis, Cambridge Elements, the International Association for the Philosophy of Time, and the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers. At Durham, I am a Senior Fellow of University "Castle" College. For my popular books I am represented by United Agents. 

For further information about my research, popular writing, and media work, please see my personal website www.emilythomaswrites.co.uk

• American-British metaphysics (17th to early 20th century)
• Space and time (in the history of metaphysics)
• Women in the history of philosophy
• Philosophy of travel
• Pictures in the history of philosophy

Authored book

• Thomas, E. (2023). Victoria Welby. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009345897
• Thomas, E. (2020). The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. Oxford University Press
• Thomas, E. (2018). Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics. Oxford University Press

Book review

• Thomas, E. (2022). The Unknowable: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Metaphysics, by W. J. Mander. Mind, 131(521), 357-361. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzaa050
• Thomas, E. (2021). Book Review of 'Space: A History', edited by Andrew Janiak (Oxford University Press, 2020). Philosophy, 96(2), 319-322. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819121000036

Chapter in book

• Thomas, E. Cavendish, Conway, and Cockburn on Matter. In K. Detlefsen, & L. Shapiro (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy. Routledge
• Thomas, E. (in press). Travel Writing and Early Modern Experimental Philosophy. In Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_97-1
• Thomas, E. (2023). Metaphysical Idealists in Britain: Constance Naden, Victoria Welby, and Arabella Buckley. In A. Stone, & L. Moland (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century (C34S1–C34N22). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197558898.013.34
• Janiak, A., & Thomas, E. (2022). Space and its Relationship to God. In D. Miller, & D. Jalobeanu (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution (424-438). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108333108.025
• Thomas, E. (2021). Locke, Newton, and Edmund Law. In J. Gordon-Roth, & S. Weinberg (Eds.), The Lockean Mind. Routledge
• Thomas, E. (2021). Samuel Alexander’s Place in British Philosophy: Realism and Naturalism from the 1880s Onwards. In A. Fisher (Ed.), Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity (113-127). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65121-3_7
• Thomas, E. (2021). Travel as Exploration: Science, the Unknown and Personal Discovery. In M. Niblett, & K. Beuret (Eds.), Why Travel? (205-228). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529216394.ch011
• Thomas, E. (2021). Travelling for Exploration: Science, Space Travel, and Personal Discovery. In M. Niblett, & K. Beuret (Eds.), Why Travel? Understanding our Need to Move and How it Shapes our Lives. Bristol University Press
• Thomas, E. (2020). The History of Philosophy and its Disappeared Women. In E. Vintiadis (Ed.), Philosophy by Women: 23 Philosophers Reflect on Philosophy and Its Values. Routledge
• Thomas, E. (2018). Anne Conway on the Identity of Creatures over Time. In E. Thomas (Ed.), Early Modern Women on Metaphysics. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316827192.008
• Thomas, E. (2017). Creation, Divine Freedom, and Catharine Cockburn: An Intellectualist on Possible Worlds and Contingent Laws. In Women and Liberty, 1600-1800. Oxford University Press
• Thomas, E. (2016). Samuel Alexander’s Spacetime God: A Naturalist Rival to Current Emergentist Theologies. In A. A. Buckareff, & Y. Nagasawa (Eds.), Alternative Concepts of God (255-273). Oxford University Press

Edited book

• Thomas, E. (Ed.). (2018). Early Modern Women on Metaphysics. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316827192

Journal Article

• Thomas, E. (in press). Constance Naden’s Metaphysics: Hylo-Idealism’s Ideal Known World and Unknown Matter. Journal of the History of Philosophy,
• Thomas, E. (2023). The Specious Present in English Philosophy 1749-1785: On David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, Abraham Tucker, and William Watson. Philosophers' Imprint, 23(1), https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1281
• Thomas, E. (2023). Mary Calkins, Victoria Welby, and the spatialization of time. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 31(2), 205-230. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2123780
• Thomas, E. (2023). The Philosophy of Joseph Priestley’s 1765 Timeline: Abstract Ideas, Time, and Human Progress. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 40(1), 25-58. https://doi.org/10.5406/21521026.40.1.03
• Thomas, E. (2023). The Obsession with Time in 1880s-1930s American-British Philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 31(2), 149-160. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2093157
• Thomas, E. (2022). Travel, Philosophy, and Locke’s Openness to the Unknown. Studi lockiani,
• Thomas, E. (2021). Time through time: its evolution through western philosophy in seven ideas. Think, 20(58), 23-38. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1477175621000038
• Thomas, E. (2020). Time and Subtle Pictures in the History of Philosophy. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 120(2), 97-121. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoaa007
• Thomas, E. (2020). Anne Conway as a Priority Monist: A Reply to Gordon-Roth. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6(3), 275-284. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2019.1
• Thomas, E. (2019). The Roots of C. D. Broad’s Growing Block Theory of Time. Mind, 128(510), 527-549. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzx020
• Thomas, E. (2019). The Idealism and Pantheism of May Sinclair. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 5(2), 137-157. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2018.45
• Thomas, E. (2017). Time, Space, and Process in Anne Conway. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25(5), 990-1010. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2017.1302408
• Thomas, E. (2016). On the “Evolution” of Locke’s Space and Time Metaphysics. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 33(4), 305-325
• Thomas, E. (2015). Henry More and the development of absolute time. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 54, 11-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.06.003
• Thomas, E. (2015). British Idealist Monadologies and the Reality of Time: Hilda Oakeley Against McTaggart, Leibniz, and Others. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 23(6), 1150-1168. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1059314
• Thomas, E. (2015). In Defense of Real Cartesian Motion. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 53(4), 747-762. https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2015.0067
• Thomas, E. (2015). Hilda Oakeley on Idealism, History and the Real Past. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 23(5), 933-953. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1055232
• Thomas, E. (2015). Catharine Cockburn on Unthinking Immaterial Substance: Souls, Space, and Related Matters. Philosophy Compass, 10(4), 255-263. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12210
• Thomas, E. (2013). Catharine Cockburn on Substantival Space. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 30(3), 195-214
• Thomas, E. (2013). Space, Time, and Samuel Alexander. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 21(3), 549-569. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2012.734776
• Thomas, E., & Leech, J. (2013). Baking with Kant and Bradley. Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 19(1), 75-94