University of Hertfordshire

Erin Plunkett is a lecturer in Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. She is currently researching the ontology and ethics of possibility in Kierkegaard and Jan Patočka. She is the editor of Living in Uncertainty: Kierkegaard and Possibility (2023). She is also serving as editor, along with Ivan Chvatik, of a forthcoming (2022) selected edition of Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka, with the aim of introducing his work to a broader audience in the English-speaking world.

Erin’s book A Philosophy of the Essay: Scepticism, Experience, and Style (Bloomsbury, 2018) draws from continental and analytic sources to argue for the philosophical relevance of style, making the case that the essay form is uniquely suited to address the sceptical problem. 

Erin studied Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at Indiana University before pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London. She joined the Hertfordshire faculty in 2018.

Erin’s research reflects her interdisciplinary background. She considers the relationship of form to thought, particularly how genre and style inform what philosophy is able to say and what is considered philosophically relevant. She has pursued these questions in her contributions to two forthcoming edited volumes in essay studies: Essay at the Limits (2021) and the Ediburgh Companion to the Essay (2022).

Particular research interests are phenomenology, post-Kantian philosophy, Kierkegaard and existentialism, and the work of Stanley Cavell. Reasearch topics include possibility, anxiety, despair, beginnings, world (in phenomenology), receptivity, communication, and freedom. Other areas of interest include: European Romanticisms, philosophy of religion, environmental ethics, philosophical approaches to literature, and performance studies.