[3] She studied Literae humaniores at Magdalen College, Oxford, having been awarded the Anne Shaw Classical Scholarship.
[2] She then moved to the University of Edinburgh to undertake research for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree under the supervision of James Mackey and Dory Scaltsas.
[2] She completed her PhD in 1992 with a thesis titled "Aristotle and Augustine on voluntary action and freedom and weakness of the will".
[7] This point of view draws upon the Aristotelian definition of the human being as a political animal, as well as the Christian notion of natural moral law,[8] at least for those aspects which might be differentiated from a gendered perspective.
In a 2005 paper on the Theaetetus, Chappell discusses the definition of episteme in five Platonic dialogues, arguing that Plato's work has positively identified human knowledge with judgement (in Greek: doxa) supported by a rational argument for justification (logos).