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BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: | |||||||||
I was born in the New Forest, Hampshire, and my family emigrated to New Zealand on the SS Southern Cross before my first birthday. My childhood and "formative years" were spent on Auckland's North Shore, and my initial university education was at Auckland University. Ever mindful of choosing a lucrative career path, I double-majored in Philosophy and Art History. | ![]() |
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After living in London for a while in my early twenties, I moved to the US to attend graduate school. My dissertation supervisor was Gil Harman (meaning that my academic genealogy can be traced back, through a long list of dead white men, to Galileo). | |||||||||
I received my PhD from Princeton in 1997 (having found the whole Ivy League experience to be quite weird), but just as the US was beginning to feel like home, I got my first academic job in England. During the next few years as a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, I reworked my dissertation into my first book (The Myth of Morality), enjoyed the hills and pubs of the Peak District, and became adept at riding a paternoster. | |||||||||
I spent much of 2001 on research leave in France (near Saignon), where I started my second book, The Evolution of Morality. Upon being offered a 5-year research fellowship at the Australian National University in Canberra, I found the prospect of a long stretch of pure research sufficiently appealing that I quit my job in England and headed back Down Under. I discovered Canberra to be a city seemingly populated more by parrots than people (a point in its favor) and also a fine spot to have babies: my kids Max and Lucia were born there. Out of a sense of solidarity with them I became an Australian citizen. Another stint in France (near Périgueux) was followed by a move to Sydney's northern beaches in 2008, when I took up another research fellowship at the University of Sydney. | |||||||||
In 2010, I accepted a professorship at Victoria University of Wellington. Returning to New Zealand hadn't particularly been part of my master plan, but the opportunity to give my kids a Kiwi childhood was too good to pass up. In windswept Wellington I became a dog person (two terriers), took up gardening (NZ natives), and grew accustomed to earthquakes (somewhat). It turns out that the place suits me quite well; many years later, I'm still here. | |||||||||
CONTACT INFO: | ![]() Wellington coastline |
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email: | richard.joyce@vuw.ac.nz | ||||||||
snail: | Department of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington Murphy Building, Kelburn Parade Wellington 6140 New Zealand |
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These days I'm afraid I'm often too busy to reply to unsolicited emails, especially from students at universities other than my own seeking advice on their research. I don't mean to discourage people from writing to me (you never know, you might catch me on a good day), but please be understanding if you don't hear back. | |||||||||
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return to Richard's homepage here | ![]() |
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