Margaret Watkins
Professor
Education:
Ph.D. - Philosophy University of Notre Dame
Brief Biography:
Margaret Watkins joined Providence College as Dean of the Arts and Sciences in 2023. She specializes in early modern ethics and aesthetics, with a focus on David Hume. Watkins is president of the Hume Society and was the 2018 David Hume Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. She earned the PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays, published by Cambridge University Press.
Selected Publications:
Watkins, M. (2025) In Max Skjönsberg and Felix Waldmann (Ed.), Hume’s Essays as Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Watkins, M. In Elizabeth Radcliffe (Ed.), No Men Are Created Equal: Rank, Passions, and Virtues in Hume’s Treatise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Watkins, M. (2023) In Karen Detlefsen and Lisa Shapiro (Ed.), Race and Gender in Early Modern Philosophy: How Amo and Astell Wrote behind the Veil. New York, NY: Routledge
Watkins, M. (2021) Self-Knowledge and Hume’s Phenomenology of the Passions. Philosophy.(96), 577-602.
Watkins, M. (2021) In Esther Kroeker and Willem Lemmens (Ed.), Virtues Suspect and Sublime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Watkins, M. (2019) In Juanita Feros Ruys, Michael Champion, and Kirk Essary (Ed.), Unprincipled by Principle: On Hume’s Use of Affection. Routledge
Watkins, M. (2018) The Philosophical Progress of Hume's Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Watkins, M. (2017) Slaves among Us”: The Climate and Character of Eighteenth-Century Philosophical Discussions of Slavery. Philosophy Compass .(12),
Watkins, M. (2013) A Cruel but Ancient Subjugation? Understanding Hume’s Attack on Slavery.. Hume Studies.(39), 103-121.
Watkins, M. (2013) In Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson (Ed.), Negotiating with a New Sovereign: Montaigne’s Transformation of Habit into Custom. Lexington Books
