Professor Yujin Nagasawa BA, PhD

Professor Yujin Nagasawa

Department of Philosophy
H.G. Wood Professor of the Philosophy of Religion
Co-Director, Birmingham Centre for the Philosophy of Religion

Contact details

Email
y.nagasawa@bham.ac.uk
Secondary Email
yujin.nagasawa@gmail.com
Twitter
@yujinnagasawa
View my research portal
Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Yujin Nagasawa specialises in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind and applied philosophy. He is the author of Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Miracles: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2011) and God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments (Cambridge University Press, 2008). He is Editor of Religious Studies, Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion and former president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He currently leads the Global Philosophy of Religion Project, a £2.15 million research initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Dynamic Investment Fund (DIF) at the University of Birmingham.

He is the editor/co-editor of Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife (with Benjamin Matheson), (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Consciousness in the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian Monism (with Torin Alter), (Oxford University Press, 2015), Alternative Concepts of God (with Andrei Buckareff), (Oxford University Press, 2015), Scientific Approaches to the Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (with Erik J. Wielenberg), (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and There’s Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument (with Peter Ludlow and Daniel Stoljar) (MIT Press, 2004).

Personal website: www.yujinnagasawa.co.uk

An in-depth autobiographical interview, What is it like to be a philosopher?

'Is there definitive proof of the existence of God?', OUPblog

'Coronavirus: Medieval Japanese Thinkers Had Similar Reactions to Plagues - Isolate or Party', The Conversation

Biography

Yujin Nagasawa was educated as an undergraduate in Philosophy and Applied Mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the United States, and received his PhD in Philosophy from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2004.

From 2004 to 2005 he was Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada and Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at ANU.

He came to Birmingham in 2006 to take up a permanent position. He was awarded the Philosophical Quarterly Essay Prize in 2007,  the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise by the John Templeton Foundation and the University of Heidelberg in 2008, and the Excellence in Philosophy of Religion Prize by the University of St. Thomas in 2011.

He is currently Editor of Religious Studies and Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Religion, Co-Series Editor of Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion and a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion Book Series. He was also the president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion.

Postgraduate supervision

Yujin Nagasawa is willing to supervise postgraduate projects in any of his research areas. Feel free to contact him by e-mail if you would like to discuss possible postgraduate work. He supervises both campus and distance-learning PhD students in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of mind.

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

Research

  • Philosophy of Religion (the existence of God, the traditional concept of God and its alternatives, divine attributes, the problem of evil, miracles, science and religion, global/inter-religious philosophy of religion)
  • Philosophy of Mind (phenomenal consciousness, panpsychism and cosmopsychism, physicalism and dualism, semantic externalism)
  • Applied Philosophy (medical ethics, the meaning of life, death and immortality)

Funded projects

  • Pantheism and Panentheism Project (with Andrei Buckareff at Marist College; funded by the John Templeton Foundation; 2017-2019)
  • Death, Immortality and the Afterlife (with David Cheetham at the University of Birmingham; funded by the Analytic Theology Project at the University of Innsbruck; 2012-2014)
  • Alternative Concepts of God (with Andrei Buckareff at Marist College; funded by the John Templeton Foundation; 2011-2013)
  • Toward a Nonphysicalist Monist Solution to the Mystery of Consciousness (with Max Velmans at Goldsmiths, University of London; funded by the John Templeton Foundation; 2009-2011)
  • Anselmian Perfect-Being Theology and the Cognitive Science of Religion (funded by the Cognition, Religion and Theology Project at the University of Oxford; 2008-2009)

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Nagasawa, Y 2017, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198758686.001.0001

Buckareff, A & Nagasawa, Y (eds) 2016, Alternative concepts of God: essays on the metaphysics of the divine. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.001.0001

Article

Nagasawa, Y 2022, 'Evil and Impermanence in Medieval Japanese Philosophy', European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 195-226. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.2022.3816

Nagasawa, Y 2021, 'A Panpsychist Dead End', Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, vol. 95, no. 1, pp. 25-50. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisup/akab011

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Nagasawa, Y 2019, Panpsychism versus Pantheism, Polytheism, and Cosmopsychism. in W Seager (ed.), Routledge Companion of Panpsychism. pp. 259-268.

Nagasawa, Y 2018, The Problem of Evil for Atheists. in NN Trakakis (ed.), The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue. Oxford University Press.

Nagasawa, Y 2017, Global Philosophy of Religion and its Challenges. in P Draper & J Schellenberg (eds), Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays. Oxford University Press.

Chapter

Nagasawa, Y 2021, Personal Theism vs. A-personal Axiarchism. in G Gasser & S Kittle (eds), The Divine Nature: Personal and A-Personal Perspectives. Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 23-41. <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003111436-3/personal-theism-vs-personal-axiarchism-yujin-nagasawa>

Nagasawa, Y 2021, Pro-Immortalism and Pro-Mortalism. in TR Byerly (ed.), Death, Immortality and Eternal Life. 1 edn, The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion Series, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 115-133. <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003058380-8/pro-immortalism-pro-mortalism-yujin-nagasawa>

Nagasawa, Y 2016, Modal Panentheism. in A Buckareff & Y Nagasawa (eds), Alternative concepts of God: essays on the metaphysics of the divine. Oxford University Press.

Nagasawa, Y & Wager, K 2016, Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism. in G Brüntrup & L Jaskolla (eds), Papsychism: contemporary perspectives. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359943.001.0001

Nagasawa, Y 2016, Silence, evil and Shusaku Endo. in A Green & E Stump (eds), Hidden divinity and religious belief: new perspectives. Cambridge University Press, pp. 246-259. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139939621.015

Nagasawa, Y 2014, Multiverse panthesim. in K Kraay (ed.), God and the Multiverse: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives. Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Routledge, pp. 177-191.

Nagasawa, Y 2014, The paradox of Eden and black-and-white Mary. in A Moore (ed.), God, Mind and Knowledge. The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion Series, Ashgate, pp. 135-143. <https://www.routledge.com/God-Mind-and-Knowledge/Moore/p/book/9781409462101>

Anthology

Nagasawa, Y 2015, Consciousness in the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian Monism. Oxford University Press.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

  • Philosophy of religion: the existence of God, divine attributes, the problem of evil, death and immortality, science and religion, afterlife, miracles, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe
  • Philosophy of mind: consciousness, the mind-body problem, physicalism, dualism, panpsychism.

Media experience

Expertise

  • Philosophy of religion, including inter-faith dialogue
  • Applied philosophy, including biomedical ethics

Culture and collections

Schools, institutes and departments

Services and facilities