I am on research leave right now. Contact me by email if you want an appointment or are interested in PhD supervision.

I have a Laurea in Filosofia (summa cum laude) from the University of Bologna (1997), an MA in Philosophy (with Distinction) from the University of London (1998), a BPhil from Oxford (2000), and a PhD in Philosophy from the Australian National University in Canberra (2004).

Before joining the Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in 2005, I was Honorary Lecturer in Bioethics in the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at the University of Manchester and Research Associate on the EC-funded EU-RECA (on the concept of research and the ethical regulation of research activities) coordinated by Professor John Harris. Since at Birmingham, my research and teaching has focused on the philosophy of the cognitive sciences (rationality and belief).

I am the author of a textbook, Introduction to the philosophy of science (Polity Press, 2008); a monograph, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP, 2009); and a key concepts book, Irrationality (Polity, 2014). In 2011 I was awarded the American Philosophical Association Book Prize for the monograph. I am currently working on another monograph provisionally entitled Epistemic Innocence.

I edited three volumes, Philosophy and Happiness (Palgrave, 2009); with Matthew Broome, Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP, 2009) which was listed among the Guardian Books of the Year in 2009; and Delusions in Context (Palgrave, 2018) with contributions by Philip Corlett, Richard Bentall, Rachel Upthegrove, and myself. Delusions in Context is available open access. 

Until December 2019 I will be on research leave.

Before going on leave, I taught Philosophical Texts (level 2), Philosophy of Science (level 2), Philosophy of Psychology (level 3), Philosophy of Cognitive Science (M-level), and I co-taught Philosophy of Health & Happiness (M-level). 

I continue to supervise postgraduate research students in the following areas:

• Philosophy of Psychology (belief, delusion, confabulation, memory, rationality)
• Philosophy of Psychiatry (classification and diagnosis, psychiatric ethics, notion of mental disorder)

Currently I am supervising the following students:

• Alex Miller Tate
• Matilde Aliffi
• Markella Grigoriou
• Federico Bongiorno
• Valeria Motta
• Noorit Larsen
• Eugenia Lancellotta

The following students have successfully completed:

• Andrew Wright (The Problems of Pain), viva passed in February 2015.
• Andrew Woodhall (Addressing Anthropocentrism in Nonhuman Ethics), viva passed in December 2016.
• Isaura Peddis (Empathy as an Emotion), viva passed in September 2017.
• Rachel Gunn (Delusions and Affective Framing), viva passed in November 2017.
• Magdalena Antrobus (Epistemic and Psychological Benefits of Depression), viva passed in November 2017.

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Find out more - our PhD Philosophy  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

The three stigmas about mental health we need to deconstruct | Lisa Bortolotti | TEDxBrum 2017

 

My research topics include: theories of belief ascription, rationality debate in philosophy and cognitive science, rationality and self knowledge in psychopathology, delusions and confabulation, psychological realism, autonomy and personhood, demarcation between science and pseudoscience, research ethics, reproductive ethics, animal rights, death and immortality. More recently, I got interested in theories of delusion formation, in the relationship between having a diagnosis of mental illness and being morally responsible for one's actions, and in the phenomena of positive illusions and unrealistic optimism.

My 5-year project, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant (80%, EUR 1.900.065), is called PERFECT, Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts. It features a team of three post-doctoral researchers and two PhD students, and Michael Larkin (Psychology, Aston University) is also involved as a co-investigator. PERFECT featured in the Birmingham Heroes campaign on research that matters in November 2015 (mental illness) and November 2017 (youth mental health).

From September 2015 for 12 months I was on a non-residential fellowship (20%, $76,299) for a project entitled "Costs and Benefits of Optimism" as part of a funding initiative on Hope and Optimism supported by the Templeton Foundation and managed by Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame.

From September 2013 for twelve months I was funded by an AHRC Fellowship to pursue a project entitled "The Epistemic Benefits of Imperfect Cognitions". 

In 2012 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Small Grant in the Ethics & Society stream on Moral Responsibility and Psychopathology which funded a workshop on the topic in March 2013. Co-applicants were Matthew Broome (University of Oxford) and Matteo Mameli (King's College London).

From January to June 2011 I was funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Expense Grant for a project on Rationality and Sanity. 

In 2009 I was awarded AHRC reseach leave for a project on the nature of clinical delusions, and an Endeavour Research Fellowship (offered by the Department of Education, Employment and the Workplace Relations of the Australian Government) to work with Professor Max Coltheart and other members of the Belief Formation group at Macquarie University.

• Watch Lisa's inaugural lecture: "Agency without rationality"

Professional service

• Series Editor for International Perspectives on Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford University Press. 
• Member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Wellbeing.
• Member of the Editorial Board of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Ethics Science and Innovation book series, Bloomsbury Academic.
• Member of the Editorial Board of Topoi.
• Member of the Editorial Board of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
• On the Advisory Board of Philosophical Inquiries (philinq).
• Associate Editor for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2013-2016).
• E-letter Editor for Journal of Medical Ethics (2005-2010).

Membership

I am a member of the Higher Education Academy, the British Philosophical Association, the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology and the European Society for Analytic Philosophy. From 2010 to 2013 I was committee member for the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, and from 2010 to 2015 I was on the Executive of the Mind Association.

Books

• L Bortolotti (ed.) Delusions in Context. Palgrave Pivot (open access).
• L Bortolotti (2014). Irrationality. Key Concepts Series, Polity Press.
• L Bortolotti (2009). Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, Oxford University Press. 
• M Broome and L Bortolotti (eds.) (2009). Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives. International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, Oxford University Press.
• L Bortolotti (ed.) (2009), Philosophy and Happiness. Palgrave Macmillan.
• L Bortolotti (2008). Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Polity Press.

Selected papers and books chapters

• L Bortolotti (2018). Optimism, agency, and success. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3), 521-535.
• L Bortolotti and E Sullivan-Bissett (2018). The epistemic innocence of clinical memory distortions. Mind & Language 33 (3), 263-279.
• K Puddifoot and L Bortolotti (2018). Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs. Phil Studies.
• R Gunn and L Bortolotti (2018). Can delusions play a protective role? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (4), 813-833.
• L Bortolotti (2017). Stranger than fiction: Costs and benefits of everyday confabulation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (2), 227-249.
• A Jefferson, L Bortolotti and B Kuzmanovic (2017). What is unrealistic optimism? Consciousness & Cognition 50, 3-11. 
• L Bortolotti and K Miyazono (2016). The ethics of delusional belief. Erkenntnis 81 (2), 275-296.
• L Bortolotti (2016). Epistemic benefits of elaborated and systematised delusions in schizophrenia. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3), 879-900.
• L Bortolotti and K Miyazono (2015). Recent work on the nature and development of delusions. Philosophy Compass 10 (9), 636-645.
• L Bortolotti and M Antrobus (2015). Costs and benefits of realism and optimism. Current Opinion in Psychiatry 28 (2), 194-198.
• L Bortolotti (2015). The epistemic innocence of motivated delusions. Consciousness & Cognition 33, 490-499.
• J Craigie and L Bortolotti (2014). Rationality, Diagnosis, and Patient Autonomy in Psychiatry. In J.Z. Sadler, B Fulford, C W van Staden (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Psychiatric Ethics, Oxford University Press.
• K Miyazono, L Bortolotti and M Broome (2014). Prediction-error and two-factor theories of delusion formation: competitors or allies? In N Galbraith (ed.) Aberrant Beliefs and Reasoning. Psychology Press, 34-54.
• B Fulford, L Bortolotti, M Broome (2014). Taking the Long View: an Emerging Framework for Translational Psychiatric Science. World Psychiatry 13 (2), 110–117.
• L Bortolotti, M Broome, M Mameli (2013). Delusions and Responsibility for Action: Insights from the Breivik Case. Neuroethics, doi 10.1007/s12152-013-9198-4.
• L Bortolotti (2013). The relative importance of undesirable truths. Medicine Health Care and Philosophy 16 (4), 683–690.
• L Bortolotti and M Broome (2012). Affective dimensions of the phenomenon of double bookkeeping in delusions. Emotion Review 4 (2), 187–191.
• L Bortolotti, R Cox and A Barnier (2012). Can we recreate delusions in the laboratory? Philosophical Psychology 25 (1), 109–131.
• L Bortolotti and M Mameli (2012). Self-deception, delusion and the boundaries of folk psychology. Humana.Mente 20, 203–221.
• L Bortolotti (2012). In defence of modest doxasticism about delusions. Neuroethics 5 (1), 39-53.
• L Bortolotti and H Widdows (2011). The right not to know: the case of psychiatric disorders. Journal of Medical Ethics 37, 673-676.
• L Bortolotti (2011). Does reflection lead to wise choices?Philosophical Explorations 14 (3), 297-313.
• M Broome, M Mameli and L Bortolotti (2010). Moral responsibility and mental illness: a case study. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 19 (2), 179-187.
• L Bortolotti (2010). Agency, life extension, and the meaning of life. The Monist 93 (1), 38-56.
• L Bortolotti and R Cox (2009). 'Faultless' ignorance: strengths and limitations of epistemic definitions of confabulation. Consciousness & Cognition 18 (4): 952-965.
• L Bortolotti (2009). 'Delusion'. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Revised and updated in 2018.
• L Bortolotti (2009). The epistemic benefits of reason giving. Theory & Psychology 19 (5), 1-22.
• L Bortolotti and Y Nagasawa (2009). Immortality without Boredom. Ratio XXII (3), 261-277.
• L Bortolotti and M Broome (2009). A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertion. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (2), 205-224.
• L Bortolotti and M Broome (2008). Delusional beliefs and reason giving. Philosophical Psychology 21 (6), 801-821.
• L Bortolotti and B Heinrichs (2008). Delimiting the concept of research: an ethical perspective. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 28 (3), 157-179.
• L Bortolotti and M Mameli (2006). Deception in psychology: moral costs and benefits of unsought self-knowledge. Accountability in Research 13 (3), 259-275.
• M Mameli and L Bortolotti (2006). Animal rights, animal minds and human mindreading. Journal of Medical Ethics 32, 84-89.
• L Bortolotti (2005). Intentionality without rationality. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CV (3), 385-392.
• L Bortolotti (2005). Delusions and the background of rationality. Mind & Language 20 (2), 189-208.
• L Bortolotti and J Harris (2005). Stem cell research, personhood and sentience. Reproductive Biomedicine Online 10 (1), 68-75.

Selected blog posts

• L Bortolotti (2018). PERFECT meets Out of Blue: changing perceptions of mental health difficulties. Birmingham Perspective, 10 October. 
• S Stammers and L Bortolotti (2018). Overcoming injustice in mental health: is there a role for philosophy? Mental Elf, 10 October. 
• L Bortolotti (2018). What's your story? IAI news, 12 September.
• L Bortolotti (2018). Optimism and the Good Life. IAI news, 21 August.
• L Bortolotti (2018). How validating their distorted memories helps people with dementia. Aeon Ideas, 25 June. 
• L Bortolotti (2018). Confabulation: why telling ourselves stories makes us feel ok. Aeon Ideas, 13 February. 
• L Bortolotti (2015). Are Delusions Bad for You? The Forum, 26 October. 
• L Bortolotti (2015). Project PERFECT. I'm NOT disordered, 23rd February. L Bortolotti (2015). The Upside of Delusional Beliefs. Scientia Salon, 17th February.
• L Bortolotti (2014). Reverse Othello Syndrome and Epistemic Innocence. Philosop-her, 30th October.