Event overview
The Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought's Research Seminar 2025-26
CPCT’s annual research seminar meets on a bi-weekly basis and is open to centre members, graduate affiliates, and other interested staff and students as well as the general public. It aims to serve as a forum for philosophical work and dialogue at Goldsmiths.
How does philosophy listen to music? How has music influenced philosophy’s self-understanding or begotten critical thought? Does philosophical modernity resound in musical modernism? Why has philosophical thought sought recourse in musical figures such as prelude and overture? How might music’s ineffability expand philosophy’s expressive capacity, and its objectlessness attune us to the environment? Inspired by these questions and the ‘acoustic turn’ in critical thought, this seminar will explore the relationship between philosophy and music as it has unfolded throughout the twentieth century. Guided by the twin premises that music can be understood as a mode of thinking and that philosophy is an activity of listening, the series explores not only how philosophy has reflected on music but also how music has affected philosophical self-consciousness in tandem with their respective, sometimes harmonizing and sometimes discordant modernities. Listening in on conversations both between philosophers and music and between musicians and philosophy, the seminar will explore, inter alia, relations and tensions between musical style and historical process; work, performance, and normativity; serialism and structuralism; expression and anti-hermeneutics; and noise and sound. The seminar’s final third, in the summer term, will home in on plural facets of philosophy’s relationship with opera, interrogating how it has come to be a privileged locus for critical inquiries into the voice as a dimension of subjectivity – across feminist, psychoanalytic and post-analytic perspectives – as well as a testing ground for probing the relationship between Black radical thought and critical theory.
Convened by Jeremy Larkins, Julia Ng, Alberto Toscano, Bradley Rogers, and Svenja Bromberg.
This year’s sessions will be hybrid; to participate online, please register at the links below each session on the detailed session plan at https://cpct.uk/2025-26/. Free and open to the public.
Detailed session plan with links to readings
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Oct 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 22 Oct 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 12 Nov 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 26 Nov 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 10 Dec 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 21 Jan 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 4 Feb 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 25 Feb 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 11 Mar 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 25 Mar 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 6 May 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 20 May 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 3 Jun 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
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| 17 Jun 2026 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm See https://cpct.uk/2025-26/ for details and updates. |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
