Conference speakers

Jacqueline Broad

Monash University

Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Themes in Early Modern Arguments for Women’s Education

Jacqueline Broad is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She specialises in early modern philosophy and her publications include The Philosophy of Mary Astell (2015), A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (with Karen Green, 2009), and Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (2002). Her areas of interest are English women philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women’s engagement with Stoicism in the early modern era, and the philosophical foundations of women’s rights.

Deborah Brown

University of Queensland

The Demise of the Art/Nature Distinction in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy

Deborah Brown is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. She specialises in Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, and Critical Thinking for educational and organisational contexts. She has published numerous articles and two books on Descartes: Descartes and the Passionate Mind (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Descartes and the Ontology of Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2019; co-authored with Professor Calvin Normore, UCLA). In the history of philosophy, she has also published on the Sceptics, Stoics, Augustine, Aquinas, Avicenna, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Hume, and Mary Astell.

Therese Scarpelli Cory

The University of Notre Dame Indiana

The Mind as Part of Nature in Thomas Aquinas

Therese Scarpelli Cory is the John and Jean Oesterle Associate Professor of Thomistic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she also directs the Maritain Center and History of Philosophy Forum. Her research investigates the ways that medieval thinkers in the Latin and Arabic traditions conceptualized the mind, including themes such as consciousness, immateriality, subjectivity, abstraction, and the role of imagination in shaping our human experiences. One of her major interests is the thought of Thomas Aquinas; she also works on the reception of Islamic philosophy in the 13th century, as well as on thinkers such as Albert the Great and Bonaventure – thinkers and traditions that, in her view, continue to have much to teach us today.

Alexander Hampton

The University of Toronto

Sacred Nature: The Metaphysics of Participation, the Spiritual Senses and their Aesthetic Representation

Alexander J. B. Hampton is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, specialising in metaphysics, poetics and nature. His publications include Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion (Cambridge 2019), Christian Platonism: A History (ed.) (Cambridge, 2021), and the Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (ed.) (Cambridge, 2022). He was educated at the universities of Toronto, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge.

Sean Kelsey

The University of Notre Dame USA

Aristotle on Form in Nature

Sean Kelsey specialises in Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle. He joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame in 2009, having taught before that at UCLA and Iowa State; he received his PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University. Recent publications include ‘Truth and value in Plato’s Republic’ (Philosophy 88 (2013): 197-218), ‘Empty words’ (in D. Ebrey (ed.), Theory and Practice in Aristotle’s Natural Science (Cambridge, 2015)), ‘Limited Government in Plato’s Republic’ (Philosophia [Athens] 47 (2017), 50-70), and Mind and World in Aristotle's De Anima (Cambridge, 2022). He is also a co-editor of Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption Book II. Introduction, Translation, and Interpretative Essays (Cambridge, 2022).

Dalia Nassar

The University of Sydney

Life and Death in the Philosophy of Nature: A Defence of Schelling’s Organicism

Dalia Nassar is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Her work sits at the intersection of the history of German philosophy and environmental philosophy and ethics. Her most recent monograph, Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to Humboldt (Oxford University Press, 2022) investigates the understudied tradition of romantic empiricism, highlights its significance for the development of ecology, and argues for its contemporary relevance in addressing environmental questions and concerns. Nassar has a strong interest in the contributions of women philosophers, and in the ways in which philosophical canon formation has sidelined them.

Calvin Normore

The University of California, Los Angeles 

Calvin Normore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He specialises in medieval and early modern philosophy, with interests in logic, social and political philosophy, philosophy of action, and the philosophy of time. His recent work includes Descartes and the Ontology of Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2019) co-authored with Deborah Brown, and Grounding in Medieval Philosophy (Springer, 2024) co-edited with Stephan Schmid.

Contact us

For more information about this event, please contact Dr David Bronstein david.bronstein@nd.edu.au or Dr Nathan Lyons nathan.lyons@nd.edu.au.

Or visit our website to learn more about the Centre for the History of Philosophy.