Dr. Nils-Hennes Stear

Employment

• CURRENT Humboldt Research Fellow, Universität Hamburg
  
  
• 2021 Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Auburn University
  
  
• 2020-2021 Instructor, Auburn University
  
  
• 2019-2020 Visiting Research Fellow, Uppsala Universitet & University of Southampton
  
  
• 2017-2019 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, University of Southampton
  
  
• 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM
  
  
• 2010-2016 Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan
  
  

Education

• 2016 University of Michigan; PhD, Philosophy (Without Corrections)
  Advisor: Kendall Walton
  Dissertation: Problems to Appreciate: Aesthetics, Ethics, and the Imagination
  
  
• 2009 University of Sheffield; MA, Philosophy (Distinction)
  Advisor: Robert Hopkins
  
  
• 2007 University of Sheffield; BA, Philosophy (First Class Honours)
  
  

Areas of Specialization

• Aesthetics, Ethics

Areas of Competence

• Feminist Philosophy, Value Theory

Research Specialization
My research concerns a number of topics in aesthetics and ethics, particularly where these intersect. I am currently writing a book on the relationship between ethical and aesthetic value in artworks—in particular, whether an artwork's ethical value ever determines its aesthetic value and how. The question, how one kind of property determines another is, I think, ultimately a metaphysical question. It is for this reason that I have come to the University of Hamburg with its many talented metaphysicians. My project, funded by the Humboldt Stiftung, runs until at least the end of 2023.

Monographs

• 202X Beyond Moralism (under contract with Oxford University Press)

Academic Articles

• FORTHCOMING ‘Autonomism’ (for Oxford Handbook of Ethics & Art, Oxford University Press).
• FORTHCOMING ‘The Qua Problem’, The British Journal of Aesthetics.
• 2021 ‘Transparency & Egocentrism’ in Art, Representation and Make-Believe, Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton, Sonia Sedivy (ed.), (New York: Routledge), 196-213.
• 2020 ‘Fatal Prescription’, The British Journal of Aesthetics 60(2), 151-163.
• 2019 ‘Meriting a Response: The Paradox of Seductive Artworks’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97(3), 465-482.
• 2017 ‘Sport, Make-believe, and Volatile Attitudes’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75(3), 275-288.
• 2015 ‘Imaginative and Fictionality Failure: a Normative Approach’, Philosophers’ Imprint 15(34), 1-18.
• 2009 ‘Sadomasochism as Make-Believe’, Hypatia 24(2), 21-38.

Reviews and Other Academic Publications

• 2019 Review of Hans Maes – ‘Conversations on Art and Aesthetics’, The British Journal of Aesthetics 59(3), 339-341.
• 2019 Review of Peter Kivy – ‘De Gustibus’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77(3), 324-327.
• 2018 Review of Sullivan-Bissett et al. (eds.) – ‘Art and Belief’, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
• 2017 Review of Kendall Walton – ‘In Other Shoes’, The British Journal of Aesthetics 57(4), 443-447.
• 2013 The Philosopher’s Annual 32 (edited with Chloe Armstrong, Patrick Grim, Patrick Shirreff).

Major Awards

• 2022 Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; €157,500
  "Beyond Moralism: How Ethics Shapes Aesthetic Value in Artworks"
• 2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, European Commission; €195,455
  "Art & Ethics"
• 2016 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM; $370,000
  "Art, Ethics, and Normativity"