• B.A. in Philosophy (York, 2009)
• M.A. in Philosophy (York, 2010)
• PhD in Philosophy (York, 2014)

At Birmingham I have taught undergraduate modules Logic Through Language and Topics in the Philosophy of Religion. I have also taught the postgraduate module Epistemology. In the academic year 2018-19 I will be teaching two new undergraduate modules: Key Readings and Fantastic Beasts and How to Understand Them: Topics in the Philosophy of Biology.

I am currently supervising PhD students in the areas of delusion formation and implicit bias. I welcome enquires from potential PhD students interested in research in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology, and philosophy of biology.

Current PhD students

• Federico Bongiorno
• Fidaa Chehayeb
• Ray Schuur

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

I work primarily on issues in philosophy of mind and psychology, specifically belief and its connection to truth, and delusional belief. I am also interested in biological approaches to what are characteristically thought to be normative questions in philosophy of mind and epistemology. 

Books

• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema, Bradley, Helen, and Noordhof, Paul (eds.) 2017: Art and Belief. Oxford University Press.

Journal articles

• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema and Noordhof, Paul forthcoming: 'The Transparent Failure of Norms to Keep Up Standards of Belief'. Philosophical Studies.
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema forthcoming: 'Biased by Our Imaginings'. ​Mind and Language. ​doi: 10.1111/mila.12225
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema forthcoming: 'Monothematic Delusion: A Case of Innocence from Experience'. Philosophical Psychology. Vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 920–47.
• Bortolotti, Lisa and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema forthcoming: 'The Epistemic Innocence of Clinical Memory Distortions'. Mind and Language. ​Vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 263–79.
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: 'Explaining Doxastic Transparency: Aim, Norm, or Function?'  Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-017-1377-0
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: 'Aims and Exclusivity'. European Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 721–31. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: ‘Biological Function and Epistemic Normativity’. Philosophical Explorations. Vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 94–110. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema and Noordhof, Paul 2017: 'Another Defence of Owens's Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims'. Logos and Episteme. Vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 147–53.
• Stoneham, Tom, and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: 'Another Failed Refutation of Scepticism'. Teorema. ​Vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 19–30. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2016: ‘Malfunction Defended’. Synthese. Vol. 194, no. 7, pp. 2501–22 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2015: 'Implicit Bias, Confabulation, and Epistemic Innocence'. Consciousness and Cognition. Vol. 33, pp. 548–60.
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema and Noordhof, Paul 2013: ‘A Defence of Owens’s Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims’. Philosophical Studies. Vol. 163, no. 2, pp. 453–57.
• McGregor, Rafe and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2012: ‘Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence’. South African Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 55–68.

Chapters

• Bortolotti, Lisa, Antrobus, Magdalena, and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema forthcoming: ‘Are Self-enhancing Beliefs Epistemically Innocent?’ In Balcerak Jackson, Brendan and Balcerak Jackson, Magdalena (eds.) Reasoning. Oxford University Press. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema and Bortolotti, Lisa 2017. 'Fictional Persuasion, Transparency, and the Aim of Belief'. In Sullivan-Bissett, Ema, Bradley, Helen, and Noordhof, Paul (eds.) Art and Belief. Oxford University Press, pp. 153–73.
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema, Bortolotti, Lisa, Broome, Matthew and Mameli, Matteo 2017: ‘Moral and Legal Implications of the Continuity between Delusional and Non-delusional Beliefs’. In Keil, Geert (ed.) Vagueness in Psychiatry. Oxford University Press, pp. 191–210.​
• Bortolotti, Lisa, Gunn, Rachel, and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2016: ‘What Makes a Belief Delusional?’ In Mac Carthy, Ita, Sellevold, Kirsti, and Smith, Olivia (eds.) Cognitive Confusions. Legenda, pp. 37–51. 

Book reviews and commentaries

• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2018: ‘Belief-like Biases and Concept Centrality'. Symposium on Guillermo Del Pinal and  Shannon Spaulding’s 'Conceptual Centrality and Implicit Bias'. The Brains Blog. 

• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema forthcoming: 'Review of David Benatar The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions'. American Journal of Bioethics. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: 'Transparency Defended'. Symposium on Miriam McCormick's Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief. Syndicate Philosophy.  
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2017: ‘The Role of Emotions and Values in Competence’. Journal of Medical Ethics. Vol. 43, pp. 379–80
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2015: 'Review of The Aim of Belief by Timothy Chan (ed.)'. Mind. Vol. 124, no. 496, pp. 1258–64.  
• Bortolotti, Lisa and Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2014: ‘Review of New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure by Nikolaj Nottelmann’. Dialectica. Vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 141–6. 
• Sullivan-Bissett, Ema 2012: ‘Changing Approaches to Blindsight: Relevant, but not Decisive: Reply to Foley’. Philosophical Writings; Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual British Postgraduate Philosophy Conference. pp. 56–60.