Prejudice in Hume and His Contemporaries
23-24 June 2026, University College Dublin. Website
Ontological Failure in Heidegger and Beyond
1-2 June 2026, Warwick. Website
Theorizing Gender Inequality: Renaissance and Early Modern Perspectives
21-22 May 2026, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia. Website
The Annual AMI Islamic Philosophy & Theology ReadingWorkshop 2026
29 April 2026, Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham.
Thinking About God: Historical Perspectives
16 - 17 April 2026, University of Edinburgh. Website
The Keeling Graduate & Early Career Conference in Ancient Philosophy 2026
20-21 March 2026, UCL. Website
Boundary Concepts in Classical German and Analytic Philosophy
13 February 2026, Royal Holloway. Website
Loss, grief, and its therapy: philosophical perspectives from ancient Greece, Rome, and Asia
4 - 6 September 2025, Cambridge. Website
The event was a success in every sense: the papers delivered were of high quality; the discussions that followed each paper were extremely interesting and fertile, and the participants benefited from an illuminating comparative and cross-cultural dialogue. Every critical exchange was respectful and the conference was celebrated in an amicable and cooperative spirit, which contributed to the networking and discussion of potential collaborations (most of the speakers have already agreed to include their papers on an edited volume). Speakers and other participants highlighted the thoughtful organisation of the conference and how smoothly everything went. We had around 30 people attending the sessions (15 speakers plus ~15 attendees, including two undergrads, graduate students, early-career academics, senior scholars, and some members of the general public), 15 talks from academics from 10 different nationalities and based in 8 countries.
Fanon’s Philosophical Legacy
27-28 June 2025, Birkbeck. Website
2025 marks the centenary year of the birth of Frantz Fanon. Despite Fanon’s enormous influence in postcolonial studies, political thought, the history of Marxism and the humanities more widely, the specifically philosophical significance of his works is less commonly recognized.
This significance can be borne out in two broad forms. First, his contributions bear upon the traditions of European thought to which he belongs, and the concepts from which he adapts within his own works. For instance, he offers modifications to important concepts found in the works of Hegel and Nietzsche predominantly, but also engages with Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, Césaire, Freud, Adler, Beauvoir, and Sartre. Second, and less addressed in the scholarship, his works can be taken to offer important contributions in their own right to phenomenology, metaethics, moral psychology, theories of recognition and intersubjectivity, and the philosophy of history, as well as (more obviously) the philosophy of race and political philosophy.
It is the strong expectation of the program committee that a great deal of philosophical attention will be paid to Fanon in the coming years. Thus, it was the ambition that the two-day conference would break ground ahead of this expected increase in attention. The conference brought into dialogue both senior international scholars whose works on Fanon spans decades and rising stars engaging in fruitful early career research. This was an in-person event. It also acted as a launchpad for an interdisciplinary research centre, the Birkbeck Centre for Fanon Studies and Decolonial Research.
The Northern Seminar in Late Modern Philosophy
University of Durham, 19th-20th June 2025
The Northern Seminar in Late Modern Philosophy is dedicated to bringing together philosophers working on various aspects of the history of philosophy during the period which stretches (roughly) from Hegel to Stebbing. Although there have been many conferences focusing on individual aspects or schools from this period (e.g. early analytic philosophy, British Idealism, American Pragmatism, French spiritualism, etc…), there have been few opportunities for the scholars of these various aspects or schools to speak together. This seminar allowed for a very productive dialogue.
The seminar is modelled on the various X seminars in early modern philosophy but covers a later time period. Like these seminars, there are no parallel sessions and everyone attends all of the talks. There were two keynotes, and the rest of the papers were selected by a CFP. There was no conference fee.
The CFP was very successful. I had more the four times as many submissions as slots on the conference schedule. I took this as a very positive sign. I hope that I will be able to run the Northern Seminar as a yearly event and the number of submissions strongly suggests that this would be a good idea. Due to the number of submissions, I was able to select a well-balanced range of topics and speakers. There were very well-established speakers, mid- and early-career academics, postdocs, and several graduate students. There was an excellent gender balance both in terms of the speakers and the philosophers covered in the papers.
The feedback from the conference participants was excellent with many of them noting how happy they were that a forum which enables discussion with such a variety of different scholars has been created.
Bridges between Parallel Paths: Arabic-Islamic and Latin Christian Medieval Philosophies
13–14 June 2025, King’s College London. Website
The conference brought together 12 scholars working in the medieval philosophical tradition. The aim of the workshop was to showcase the different approaches of Islamic and Christian philosophers during the Middle Ages to the same or similar set of problems. As described in the grant applications, while these two traditions in some ways share a lot in common (some aspects of the religious background, as well as the inheritance from Greek philosophy), scholars of the two traditions rarely engage with each other. The conference was a real success: there was real dialogue between the speakers, many of whom have decided to co-author their papers for the journal special issue, which was really a result of the opportunity to hear about one others’ research.
The workshop consisted of six panels, with two speakers each (one from the Islamic and one from the Christian tradition). It was a hybrid event, with usually around 5-7 online participants in each session. There were also 6 participants who did not present but attended the conference.
Ancient Philosophy of Mathematics
6 June 2025, Cambridge
The workshop was a great success. We had six talks with a total of 8 speakers (I attach the programme), and we managed to achieve a very good balance in terms of both gender (6 women out of 8 speakers) and career stage (6 early career researchers out of 8 speakers) of the speakers. The talks touched on a number of different aspects of philosophy of mathematics, but managed to be in fruitful conversation with each other.
We had a great attendance, with around 50 people present, including professional mathematicians, graduate students, and specialists in ancient philosophy. The workshop achieved its aim of building the foundation for an international network of scholars interested in ancient philosophy of mathematics, and we are exploring the possibility of publishing the proceedings in an edited volume.
Spinoza and Simone Weil: Influences and Interconnections
22 - 23 May 2025, Oxford
The conference program included the keynote address of Sebastian Rödl from the University of Leipzig, which was proven to be a huge success. The speakers accepted through the CFP were Tom Vandeputte (Sandberg Institute Amsterdam), Johanna Alt (University of Aberdeen), Daniel Bella (University of Hamburg), Emily King (Brown University) and Jacob Joyce (Boston University), Deborah Casewell (University of Chester), Pierre Gillouard (University of Geneva), Malwina Tkacz (Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie), Johannes Wagner (University of Cambridge), Michael O’Connor (University of Oxford). In addition to the speakers, an additional 15 scholars attended the conference from different UK institutions.
Second Oxford Student Conference on Spinoza
7 May 2025, Pembroke College, Oxford
This second edition of the Oxford Student Conference on Spinoza was, just as the inaugural edition last year, a highly successful event. The day opened and closed with a keynote address, and in between six students (2 undergraduates, 4 postgraduates) presented their research. The opening address was delivered by Prof. Chantal Jaquet and discussed the intricacies of Spinoza’s notions of duration and eternity. The subsequent student papers concerned the role of experience in Spinoza’s account of free will (Mary Peterson, Hamburg), Spinoza’s conception of our power of acting applied to gender transition (Valentin Saad Munchenbach, Toronto), a Spinozist account of the right of ecosystems (Kas Bernays, St Andrews), Spinoza’s account of the relationship between substance and modes (David Harmon, St Andrews), the relevance of Spinoza’s notion of scientia intuitiva for Schelling’s philosophy (Vittorio Alves, Leuven), and the prologue of Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione understood as a ‘process without a subject’ (Anne Texier, Sorbonne/Paris). The closing address delivered by Prof. Steven Nadler argued how for Spinoza all the virtues are united. The conference was well attended with around 30 attendees for each of the talks. Discussion was lively, constructive and, as all were familiar with the details of Spinoza’s works, of high academic standard. Many of Oxford’s undergraduate philosophy students attended and they enthusiastically commented on how informative the day had been and how it had helped broaden their understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy – particularly well timed for their upcoming Final Examinations! However, the conference was also attended by academics working in history, literature, and philosophy both from the University of Oxford itself and beyond, and the perspectives on Spinoza from these disciplines did much to shed new, and interesting light on various aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy.
The Epistemology of Ancient Embryology
1 - 3 July 2024, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
The conference included a total of 14 speakers and a peak of 53 attendants (22 in person and 31 online) from all over the world. It explored ancient theories concerning the formation and development of the embryo, and how ancient physicians and philosophers sought to address this complex issue by applying their own doctrines and beliefs. This latter, particularly fascinating, aspect entailed a discussion of a plethora of different methodological solutions adopted by ancient thinkers, from analogies mostly based on artifacts, plants and other animals, to cosmological and mathematical calculations. Thus the conference provided a platform to compare different ancient views about the topic, while highlighting connections and the development of such ideas in the ancient world; its epistemological angle, along with its focus on interactions between different authors, which went beyond Classical antiquity, and also embraced ancient Egypt and China, constitutes a true novelty for the field. Caterina Pellò (Geneva) opened the conference with a paper discussing some of the most relevant aspects of Presocratic embryology, such as the nature of the generative seed and resemblance, with a particular focus on Parmenides and Democritus, followed by Nathasja Roggo-van Luijn (Mainz), who discussed the use and relevance of analogies in the Hippocratic corpus, with a particular emphasis on Diseases of Women 1, On Generation and On the Nature of the Child. George Kazantzidis (Patras) continued the discussion of Hippocratic embryology with a specific focus on the role of marvel and precision in medical accounts, and how they affect the treatises’ narrative plot, by addressing the specific case of the seven-month foetus; Vishnya Knezhevich (Belgrade) investigated Philolaus’ embryology by positioning his view within ancient Greek embryological debates and through a comparison with Hippocratic literature. Alesia Preite (Heidelberg) presented an account of Platonic embryology as inferred from the Timaeus, by examining the relevance of marrow and its relation with the soul. With Nora Woodcock (Princeton) and Mariska Leunissen (North Carolina, Chapel Hill) the focus of the discussion shifted to Aristotelian embryology: Woodcock investigated the role of eggs in Aristotle’s biology by comparing it with that of the uterus, whereas Leunissen gave an account of the influences of female knowledge of embryology, both through experience and old-wives tales and superstitions, on Aristotelian biological works. Aistė Čelkytė (Leiden) examined Neopythagorean embryological theories, thus introducing a new ancient methodological framework for the study of the embryo, that is mathematical calculations. Sophia Connell (Birkbeck University of London) examined the complex account of Galen’s reproductive gynaecological theories, while seeking to unpack the multiple sources of his information, from medical hearsay, to Hippocratic influence, which betray the author’s lack of observation. George Karamanolis (Vienna) investigated the issues pertaining early Christian beliefs about the soul of the embryo, which also entails ethical issues, and in particular the question as to whether the human soul is present from the time of conception. Chiara Blanco (Newcastle) explored medical and biological influences on first-century BCE Roman poet Lucretius, and how he merges Hippocratic and Aristotelian theories with his own atomistic philosophical framework. 1Anne Behnke Kinney (Virginia) and Lisa Raphals (University of California Riverside) explored embryological theories from ancient China; Kinney explored cosmological influences on the development of the foetus and how they affect notions of medical, social, and ritual practice; starting from an examination of recently excavated Chinese texts on embryology from the fourth, third and second century BCE, Raphals examined the relevance of factors of time, space and nurture in birth prognostication, which entails issues of fortune, nature and character. Finally, Cathie Spieser (Fribourg) focused on embryological theories in ancient Egypt, such as the conception of the embryo as an egg and the representation of life development through a matrix vase, by showing their interaction with ancient Greek knowledge. The conference ended with a final discussion led by the organisers which involved speakers and attendants alike and reiterated the main preliminary results and most relevant observations which emerged from the conference, along with multiple connections between the different papers, and provided the first step towards the publication of the conference proceedings. The crosspollination of ideas within ancient Greece, between Greece and Rome, and even beyond, proved the existence of fertile ground for a broader interdisciplinary discussion about ancient medical, philosophical and mathematical theories, narrative style and the use of analogies, and methodology more broadly, which will be the object of our volume.
North American Fichte Society Conference
15-17 June 2024, UCL
The conference was held with 40 scheduled speakers. The event ran smoothly, and was a very productive and constructive meeting of both senior and junior people working on Fichte. About a third of our presenters were women. The atmosphere was collegial throughout, and the social events were informal and well-attended. About 30 people attended the conference dinner, which is going to be reimbursed by our other generous sponsors, the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society. At the business meeting of the NAFS, it was decided that we should investigate avenues for publication of a collection of essays. The two options that were mentioned specifically were Oxford University Press (as they have published Daniel Breazeale's translation of Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and our grant from the Mind Association entitles us to apply for inclusion in the occasional series), as well as De Gruyter-Brill, who are the publishers of Fichte-Studien, and have a supplementary volume series.
I am pleased that we got money for childcare, as it allowed one delegate to travel to the conference from South America, who would not otherwise have been able to make it.
Oneirata. Workshop on Sleep, Dreams, and Divination in Aristotle and his Predecessors.
22 - 23 May 2024, University of Duhram
The wide range of subjects addressed in the papers presented at the workshop has demonstrated the value of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of oneiric life in ancient culture. Notably, the interactions between ancient studies and contemporary neurocognitive studies have shed new light on the cultural and scientific significance of sleep and dreams as human experiences that trascend temporal boundaries. The workshop has benefited from substantial contributions from a number of different disciplines, including ancient literature, ancient medical studies, Aristotelian science of sleep and dreams, neuro-cognitive research into sleep and hallucinatory phenomena, and philosophical and religious connections on the topic of dreams and divination. The participants have enlarged their understanding of the oneiric world, and enriched their knowledge about the ancient and contemporary views about sleep and related phenomena. Indeed, several crucial questions emerged during the discussion. These included the role of human faculties in the formation of dreams, the relationship between body and soul in the experience of sleep, and the meaning of foretelling the future through dreams, both in the ancient and contemporary world. Thanks to the high quality of the papers and their overall cohesion on the topic of oneiric life, the organisers will submit a proposal for a co-edited volume of the workshop.
We received a great number of expressions of interest for participating in the workshop, both in person and online. The event had an international breadth, with the participation of three invited speakers from abroad (University of Tübingen, University of Toronto, Monash University); two invited speakers from several UK universities (University of Exeter, Open University, Newcastle University); and 15 respondents and chairpersons from different European and UK Universities. The invited participants at the workshop were 23, comprising eight speakers, seven respondents, and eight chairs.
The 300th Anniversary conference: ‘Kant at 300 on Reason, Nature and Freedom’
20 - 21 May 2024, Newman House, Dublin. Website
This conference had approximately 55 attendees from Europe and America. Our keynote speakers were Onora O’Neill, Ido Geiger, Tobias Rosefeldt and Lucy Allais, representing the UK, Israel, Germany, and the U.S.A. respectively. There were talks on all aspects of Kant’s philosophy from speakers who were at doctoral, post-doctoral, untenured lecturer, tenure-track lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Professor status. The conference was very successful and included a speech from the German ambassador to Ireland.
Virtue in Aristotle
18 - 19 April 2024, King’s College London
Our speakers will be Giulia Bonasio (Durham), Daniel Ferguson (KCL), Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi (UCL), Margaret Hampson (St. Andrews), Jozef Müller (UC-Riverside and Hamburg), Karen Margrethe Nielsen (Oxford), and Daniel Wolt (Bilkent). For more information, please email Daniel Ferguson ().
Kant’s Dynamic Theory of Matter
7 - 8 March 2024, Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculté de Philosophie et de Sciences Sociales
Six invited speakers presented talks: Kristina Engelhard (Universität Trier), “Kant’s Proof of Dynamism in the General Remark to the Dynamics”, Paolo Pecere (Università degli Studi Roma Tre), “The Turn in Kant's Dynamics and its Motivations”, Helmut Pulte (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), “From the True Estimation to the Metaphysical Foundations. Some Genetic Aspects of Kant’s Dynamic Theory of Matter”, Marius Stan (Boston College), “Kant’s Balance Argument: Structure and Warrant”, Daniel Warren (University of California, Berkeley), “Conceptions of Force and Motion in the Dynamics and Mechanics Chapters of MFNS”, Daniel Sutherland (University of Illinois, Chicago), “Pure Construction in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science”.
In addition, papers were given by the organisers, Henny Blomme (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Stephen Howard (KU Leuven), and by four speakers accepted through the CFA: Farhad Alavi (University of Edinburgh), L. Edward Allore (Western Ontario), Luciana Martínez (FCT, Universidade de Lisboa) (presenting paper co-authored with Laura Pelegrin (Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET), who could not attend), and Valtteri Viljanen (University of Turku).
All speakers attended in person with the exception of Farhad Alavi, who was sadly prevented from attending in person due to visa issues. He presented via Zoom, and we know he has been in touch with many speakers by email after the event. All talks were livestreamed on Zoom.
The conference was well attended in person by students and researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles, KU Leuven, and the Brussels region. One PhD researcher travelled from Ireland to attend the conference. We did not monitor online attendance but there were usually at least 10 online attendees. Lunch, coffee and refreshments were provided to all attendees; dinner was open to all, and the cost was covered for the speakers.
Guises of Nihilism in Late Modern Thought
7 March 2024, Birkbeck's Keynes Library
It was a very successful event, which drew around 40 attendees composed of undergraduate, postgraduate, postdoctoral, and professional philosophers from across London and southern England. The four talks given by G. Anthony Bruno, Richard Elliott, Eliza Little, and Kate Withy were very engaging and generated lively and fruitful discussion.
All involved were accommodated with refreshments throughout the day, accessible local lunch choices, and a thoroughly sunny day in a bright, lovely space overlooking Gordon Square. A number of networking relations were either formed or strengthened among attendees, faculty and students alike, with particular bonds connecting or reconnecting the London area's sizeable population of philosophers who concentrate on the post-Kantian tradition broadly construed.
The feedback received by each presenter will help them to sharpen their papers' arguments in the lead-up to the submission of these papers to the BJHP special issue on nihilism that I'm editing this year. With the generous support of the BSHP, this London Post-Kantian Seminar event was a great success, which bodes well for future LPKS events, including an event I'm now conceiving focusing on guises of nihilism in contemporary life, of which undeniably there are many.
For more information about any of these events, contact the BSHP secretary.
Mary Wollstonecraft