Careers

On this page:

Introduction Brett Calcott - PhD Student Helena de Bres - PhD Student Louise Hull - Policy Analyst John Peterson - Lawyer Roger Sansom - Philosopher

Introduction

As you can see from reading the profiles of past Victoria Philosophy students on this page, studying Philosophy at Victoria can help you get into a range of interesting careers.

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Brett Calcott

I recently migrated from Wellington to Canberra, Australia, where I am a PhD Scholar in the Philosophy Program in the Research School at ANU. My thesis follows on from interests established at Vic. Uni in philosophy of biology, and will be on the major transitions in evolution. I enjoy the interdisciplinary crossover in this type of philosophy. The conceptual problems are fueled by fascinating and fast growing empirical work, and the subject touches and sheds light on many traditional areas of philosophical study: mind, science, language, and ethics.

The department at Vic. was very encouraging in this kind of work, my honours year included artificial intelligence and adaptive complexity courses in the computer science department, and attendance at an evolution course in the biology dept, as well as philosophy of language, mind, and my own project in philosophy of biology. On the strength of this work I was able to get a scholarship at ANU, which is a top choice for my area of interest. I also highly recommend the student seminars. Exercising your thoughts in public is a great way to test them out, and the ensuing discussions at the preferred watering hole were always enlightening (to say the least).

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Helena de Bres

I completed my BA in Philosophy and French at VUW in 1999, and my Honours degree in Philosophy at the end of 2000. At the end of that year, along with 3 other students from New Zealand and Australia, I was awarded a 2-month Summer Research Scholarship in the Philosophy Program at the ANU’s Research School of Social Sciences in Canberra. I then applied to graduate school in the U.S., accepted the offer I received from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and started the 5-yr PhD program there in the Fall of 2002. My philosophical interests currently lie mainly in political philosophy and philosophy of social science, along with some areas of ethics and philosophy of mind.

I found the philosophical training I received at Victoria University to be excellent preparation for postgraduate study at MIT. In the space of 4 years I was able to establish a broad grounding in most of the major areas of contemporary Philosophy, as well as develop analytic and writing skills that have served me well not only in Philosophy, but also in other areas of study. The academic standing of the department also assisted me greatly when applying for scholarships both within and outside the University – among those I was awarded on the force of my Philosophy courses were a VUW Postgraduate Award, the Gordon Watson Scholarship 2002, and a Fulbright Fellowship for study in the U.S.

If the level of scholarship and quality of teaching at the Vic department compare excellently with those I’ve experienced in the States, the collegial and social environment centered around Hughes House is without a doubt a good deal superior to that generally found over here. The small size of the department lends itself very well to the establishment of supportive collegial relationships amongst students and faculty relatively early on in the undergraduate program. In addition, the department’s members are impressively dedicated in encouraging interested students to pursue further study either in NZ or overseas, and are supportive in that area well past graduation. The overall atmosphere in the department is an engaging mixture of intellectual seriousness and social frivolity. The latter of which being aided of course by the indisputable fact that, as a place to eat, drink and be merry, Wellington blows many other international cities right out of the water.

Without the support of the VUW department I doubt I would have considered applying to grad school - which would have been a shame, given that I’m having such a fabulous time. But even for those not interested in taking Philosophy further than their undergraduate years I’d recommend the department highly. I found the courses I took at the Phil department at Vic to be by far the most intellectually stimulating and rewarding of my undergraduate years, and would regard them as an excellent supplement to almost any course of study.

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Louise Hull

I work for the Ministry of Economic Development, working as a researcher and analyst in the industry and regional development branch. I deal with theory, analysis and argument for various types of government intervention to aid aspects of the NZ economy.

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have my job without a masters. I did my masters for the enjoyment of the subject, and the bargaining power of having a masters, but it turned out that a masters in philosophy was the best possible training for the field I have ended up in. Economics is searching for theories of behaviour and often lacks the rigorous analysis one might expect, so philosophy has given me a grounding in theory and a discipline in reasoning and analysis which has made doing this job possible, and which has made it possible to do it well.

Doing philosophy, but especially writing a masters in philosophy, taught me how to grapple with unfamiliar theory, analyse unfamiliar problems and spot poorly worked ideas and arguments in a topic you don't know at all. This is amazingly useful when you have to move into unfamilar territory, which I have done, and which happens in any job, I think.

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John Peterson

I am currently a tax associate working in the London office of a New York law firm. I am a former New Zealand Commonwealth Scholar and, in addition to my law and philosophy degrees from Victoria, I have a BCL from Oxford University and an LLM in International Taxation from New York University. I have worked as a tax lawyer in New Zealand, New York and London.

Philosophy sharpens your ability to analyse language, to identify faulty logic, to structure an argument and to reason in the abstract ... above all else, philosophy teaches you to distinguish a good argument from a bad one - and this skill is the foundation upon which any successful career must be based.

In my experience, employers view a qualification in philosophy as the hallmark of a candidate with strong language abilities and an enquiring mind .. my masters in philosophy has proved an ideal complement to my professional qualifications.

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Roger Sansom

I stumbled onto philosophy by an accident of scheduling as an undergraduate and have yet to quit the habit, which has taken me on to a PhD from the University of North Carolina and an assistant professorship at Texas A & M University.

The philosophy department of Victoria University of Wellington prepared me very well for my academic career. The classes that I took in the department consisted mainly of presenting the contemporary problems in an interesting way, offering a number of proposed solutions along with their weaknesses, and requiring that I figure out my own view and justify it. It demanded a combination of creativity and rigor that I found in no other department. I model the way that I teach now on how I was taught at Vic.

My research also owes a great deal to what I learned at Victoria. My main project brings together the connectionist theory of mind with the problem of gene regulation in developmental biology. I learned about connectionism and gained my general interest in philosophy of biology at Vic.

Victoria’s department of philosophy boasts faculty who are not just excellent academics, but also open and friendly. The department is small enough to form a close intellectual and social community, of which I still feel a part. In fact, I know most of the people who have written bios on this page, and I’ll probably know all soon enough.

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