• Offered by School of Philosophy
  • ANU College ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
  • Course subject Philosophy
  • Academic career PGRD
  • Course convener
    • Prof Alan Hajek
  • Mode of delivery In Person
  • Offered in First Semester 2025
    Autumn Session 2025
    Second Semester 2025
    Spring Session 2025
    See Future Offerings

The course is designed for students in philosophy. It is designed to aid students in acquiring important research skills that they will need in the course of research. The course typically consists of 24 2 hour sessions in seminar format. This will be taken over 2 semesters.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:

  1. to identify important, potentially fruitful research questions within a subfield of philosophy;
  2. to find in large literatures key resources which repay intensive study;
  3. to idenitfy and focus on the crucial issues a text raises, and to avoid being sidetracked by minor questions;
  4. to situate their research within the broader aspects of their discipline; and
  5. to see the relationships between crucial texts, and the questions they raise.

Indicative Assessment

  1. 6 x 1000 words, written responses to each of the readings (assessed by the principal supervisor) comprised of 2 responses to compulsory readings, 2 responses to selected readings from a given list, 2 reponses to self-selected readings (30) [LO 1,2,3,4,5]
  2. In-class participation (20) [LO 1,2,3,4,5]
  3. 5000 words completion of a draft of a key concepts and/or argument and/or methodology chapter or equivalent (50) [LO 1,2,3,4,5]

The ANU uses Turnitin to enhance student citation and referencing techniques, and to assess assignment submissions as a component of the University's approach to managing Academic Integrity. While the use of Turnitin is not mandatory, the ANU highly recommends Turnitin is used by both teaching staff and students. For additional information regarding Turnitin please visit the ANU Online website.

Workload

130 hours of total student learning time made up from

a) 24 hours of seminars over 12 weeks and

b) 106 hours of independent student research, reading and writing.

Requisite and Incompatibility

To enrol in this course you must be enrolled in a PhD in Arts & Social Sciences.

Prescribed Texts

One of the learning objectis is for students to find for themselves important material. But their efforts will be supervised and monitored by individual instructors.

Fees

Tuition fees are for the academic year indicated at the top of the page.  

Commonwealth Support (CSP) Students
If you have been offered a Commonwealth supported place, your fees are set by the Australian Government for each course. At ANU 1 EFTSL is 48 units (normally 8 x 6-unit courses). More information about your student contribution amount for each course at Fees

Student Contribution Band:
14
Unit value:
12 units

If you are a domestic graduate coursework student with a Domestic Tuition Fee (DTF) place or international student you will be required to pay course tuition fees (see below). Course tuition fees are indexed annually. Further information for domestic and international students about tuition and other fees can be found at Fees.

Where there is a unit range displayed for this course, not all unit options below may be available.

Units EFTSL
12.00 0.25000
Domestic fee paying students
Year Fee
2025 $8640
International fee paying students
Year Fee
2025 $12720
Note: Please note that fee information is for current year only.

Offerings, Dates and Class Summary Links

ANU utilises MyTimetable to enable students to view the timetable for their enrolled courses, browse, then self-allocate to small teaching activities / tutorials so they can better plan their time. Find out more on the Timetable webpage.

The list of offerings for future years is indicative only.
Class summaries, if available, can be accessed by clicking on the View link for the relevant class number.

First Semester

Class number Class start date Last day to enrol Census date Class end date Mode Of Delivery Class Summary
3067 17 Feb 2025 24 Feb 2025 31 Mar 2025 23 May 2025 In Person N/A

Autumn Session

Class number Class start date Last day to enrol Census date Class end date Mode Of Delivery Class Summary
5315 01 Apr 2025 02 May 2025 02 May 2025 30 Jun 2025 In Person N/A

Second Semester

Class number Class start date Last day to enrol Census date Class end date Mode Of Delivery Class Summary
8014 21 Jul 2025 28 Jul 2025 31 Aug 2025 24 Oct 2025 In Person N/A

Spring Session

Class number Class start date Last day to enrol Census date Class end date Mode Of Delivery Class Summary
9301 01 Oct 2025 24 Oct 2025 24 Oct 2025 31 Dec 2025 In Person N/A

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