I retired as Professor of Philosophy at the end of September 2007, and am now an Emeritus Professor of the University. I am continuing to work on major projects, but am now based at Kellogg College, Oxford, where I am Senior Research Fellow and Academic Director of their newly established Centre for the Study of Religion in Public Life. From 2007-11 I have also been Co-Principal Investigator on a research programme funded by the John Templeton Foundation, working with the Oxford Centre for Anthropology and Mind, part of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. The project involved empirical work in the cognitive science of religion and also reflection of its philosophical implications.

My last book - 'Religion in Public life:' Must Religion Be Privatized?' - dealt with the issue of the public recognition of religion in a pluralist society (further details). My next book, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2011 is ‘Equality, Freedom and Religion’. As a part of the same project (also funded by the John Templeton Foundation) I have published in 2010 a major report on religious freedom in the United Kingdom called ‘Free to Believe? Religious Freedom in a Liberal Society’ for the Theos Think Tank in London, and available from their website (www.theosthinktank.co.uk). I am engaged in a three year joint project on religious freedom from January 2011 between the Kellogg Centre for the Study of Religion in Public Life in Oxford and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs in Georgetown University, Washington D.C.

I also have a particular interest in the relationship between science and religion, and am joint editor of the Ashgate series of monographs in the subject.

I am a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, New Jersey, where I spent a semester in 2002. I was the Founding President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion (1993-6), and was also President of the Mind Association (1997-8). From 2008-10 I was President of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion.  In 2000 I chaired the Benchmarking Group in Philosophy on behalf of the Quality Assurance Agency. This set standards for British undergraduate degrees in Philosophy. From 1997 to 2003 I chaired the National Committee for Philosophy and in 2003-4 became the first Chair of its successor, the British Philosophical Association, founded to represent all British Philosophy.

Online Lecture

• Do Science and Religion Need Each Other? Emmanuel College Cambridge, 8 May 2003.

Selected Publications

• Pain and Emotion, Clarendon Press, 1970
• Reason and Commitment, Cambridge University Press, 1973
• Reality at Risk: a Defence of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences, Harvester, 1980; second and enlarged edition 1989
• The Shaping of Man: Philosophical Aspects of Sociobiology, Blackwell, 1982
• Understanding Social Science, Blackwell, 1985; second, enlarged edition 2001
• Ideas of Human Nature, Blackwell, 1988; second edition 1999
• Rationality and Science: Can Science Explain Everything?, Blackwell, 1993
• Rationality and Religion: Does Faith Need Reason? Blackwell, 1998
• Philosophy Matters, Blackwell, 2001
• Morality Matters, Blackwell, 2004
• Religion in Public Life, Oxford University Press, 2007

Email

R.H.Trigg@warwick.ac.uk

British Philosophical Association