Michael Brady is a philosopher who has greatly contributed to recent debates within philosophy about how suffering and adversity can be valuable along a number of dimensions, and in particular for character development. Of course, philosophy as a discipline has a long history of thinking about a phenomenon that research psychologists in the past twenty-five years have come to study under the label of post-traumatic growth (PTG). Until recently there unfortunately has been little contact between the disciplines of philosophy and psychology regarding PTG. In his talk, Michael Brady presents findings from a pioneering paper he co-authored with psychologist Eranda Jayawickreme that will be published in the coming months. On the one hand, Brady discusses how philosophical thinking can profit from psychologists providing sources for potential empirical support when theorising PTG from a philosophical perspective. On the other hand, he shows how philosophy can help to address substantive critiques (e.g. regarding validity) levelled at psychologists’ study of PTG and clarify the shape that research into PTG should take in the future.

Accompanying Workshop
(Post-)doctoral students are invited to apply for participation in the accompanying workshop on October 12th. For further details and how to apply till September 26th the latest, please view the workshop's website.

Here is a link to an online guest talk by Michael Brady at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences titled "Suffering and Meaning in Life" from December 2020.