Spring Happenings

I trust that everyone celebrated, in their own fashion, the 750th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s death this past week. (My own celebrations took place in Leuven.) For anyone uninspired by that anniversary, we now have the 750th anniversary of the 1277 condemnations to look forward to in three years’ time.

Here’s some information about what’s going on in the field. Many of the deadlines are for this Friday, March 15.

Notre Dame’s History of Philosophy Forum is advertising a three-year postdoc, open to any area in the history of philosophy. The application deadline is March 25, 2024. Details here.

That same Notre Dame program is advertising two funding opportunities to spend limited periods of time conducting research in South Bend. The application deadlines are March 15, 2024. Details here.

The SIEPM is advertising various prizes and funding opportunities this spring, including the Jacqueline Hamesse Award for the best paper by a younger scholar, and the one-to-one stipend for junior scholars seeking to spend time working with a senior scholar in the field.

Funded PhD positions in medieval studies are available through a program jointly sponsored by King’s College London and Kent University, thanks to a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. See details here. Students interested in applying in philosophy should contact Dr. Zita Toth (KCL).

There’s also the opportunity for PhD funding in Helsinki, working with Filipe Pereira da Silva on the topic of ancient sources of matter in late medieval commentaries on Aristotle. The application deadline is this week: March 15, 2024. Details here.

The 34th meeting of the Medieval Philosophy Network in the U.K. will take place on March 19th, 2024 in London.

The annual Journée Incipit is scheduled for March 23rd, 2024, in Paris. The keynote lecture will be given by Wouter Goris (Bonn).

In Naples next month there’s a three-day conference on San Tommaso d’Aquino, uomo del Mediterraneo, uomo del dialogo (April 25-27, 2024).

There’s a week-long summer seminar in Germany this summer on thirteenth-century debates on human freedom. The program is open to advanced undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs (July 3-7, 2024, Regensburg). Some funding is available. Despite what the website says, I have it on good authority that the correct application deadline is this week: March 15.

The Thomistic Institute (Washington DC) is sponsoring a week-long colloquium for graduate students this summer on Contemporary Thomistic Christology (July 29-Aug 3, 2024, Washington). Funding is available. The application deadline is this week: March 15.

There’s a conference in Paris in June to celebrate the joint 750th anniversaries of the death of Aquinas and Bonaventure (June 13-14, 2024). Details at Pariscope médiéval.

The University of Lisbon, in collaboration with the Society for the European History of Ideas, is organizing its own conference in October to celebrate the Aquinas-Bonaventure anniversaries (October 9-11, 2024, Lisbon). Cfp deadline: March 28, 2024. [Now extended to April 28th.] See details here.

Durham University is advertising two online, two-week intensive courses in Latin and early-modern English paleography. Details here.

A couple of significant European professorships in medieval philosophy have been filled recently. In Leuven, Jenny Pelletier has been appointed to a permanent research professorship. Meanwhile, Nicola Polloni has been appointed to a similar position in Messina.

Help wanted. Some time ago, I announced an initiative to start an open-access series of editions and translations in medieval philosophy. Through the hard work of many, this initiative—the Medieval Text Consortium—is now coming close to seeing the appearance of its first volume, with more in the works. We would be glad to receive proposals for future volumes. At the moment, though, we are looking for someone with skills in LaTeX typesetting (or at a minimum an enthusiasm to learn), who could help us bring these volumes into print. Some compensation is available. Anyone interested in being involved in the project should contact me directly.

Updates from December 2023

The University of Toronto has advertised a senior position in classical Islamic philosophy. This is the faculty line currently held by Deborah Black who is, alas, retiring. The application deadline is January 11, 2024.

Tamer Nawar (Barcelona) is advertising two three-year postdoctoral positions and two four-year PhD positions, in association with his ERC project on Truth in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. The application deadlines are the end of February 2024.

The Extending New Narratives project is advertising two one-year postdocs, focused on “research related to the retrieval and recognition of philosophical works by women and individuals from other marginalized groups in both the European and non-European traditions” from the 9th century forward. Details here. The application deadline is January 3, 2024.

The History of Philosophy Forum (Notre Dame) is advertising various small grants for scholars seeking to conduct research for several weeks at Notre Dame. Details here. The application deadline is March 15, 2024.

Notre Dame is also advertising its annual Mellon Junior Faculty Fellowship in Medieval Studies. This is a year-long fellowship aimed at scholars who are assistant professors at North American universities. The application deadline is February 1, 2024. Details here.

The monthly KU Leuven hybrid Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy has announced its schedule this academic year, on the general theme of “Encounter, Dialogue, and Integration: The Reception of Western Medieval Philosophy in East Asia.” The schedule, and details on how to join, by zoom or in person, can be found here.

The XXIV European Symposium in Medieval Logic and Semantics has extended its cfp deadline until December 20th, 2023. The theme is Truth, Falsity and Lying (Parma, June 17-20, 2024).

The University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) is holding an interdisciplinary conference in March to honor the 750th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s death (March 7-9, 2024). The Cfp deadline is December 31, 2023. Participants will receive a travel stipend.

Symposium Thomisticum VII meets next June on the topic of Aquinas in History. The cfp deadline is February 29, 2024 (Vienna, June 6-8, 2024).

St. Louis University is advertising its annual interdisciplinary Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies. They welcome proposals for individual papers and complete sessions (June 10-12, 2024). The submission deadline is December 31, 2023.

The annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition has put out a call for submissions. This year’s topic is “Knowledge, Nous, and Noetics in Aristotle and the Aristotelian Traditions” (Milwaukee, June 24-26, 2024). The cfp deadline is February 15, 2024.

The International Society for the Study of Medieval Theology is holding a conference next summer on The End: Finiteness, Death, and Completion in Medieval Theology (Utrecht, June 26-28, 2024). The application deadline is December 20th, 2024.

The SIEPM has put out the call for proposals for its 2024 annual colloquium, in Prague, on the topic Communities of Debate: Collective Intellectual Practice in Medieval Philosophical Thought. (Sept. 4-6, 2024, Prague). Cfp deadline is Jan. 31, 2024.

Congratulations to Stephen Ogden (Notre Dame), who has won the annual book prize from the Journal of the History of Philosophy for Averroes on Intellect (OUP, 2022).

Congratulations to Colin Murtha (Nijmegen) for winning the SMRP’s 2023 Founder’s Award for the best paper by a younger scholar. The paper’s title is “A Stratified World: Avicenna’s Theory of the Sublunary Strata.”

Back in October, Brill and De Gruyter announced that they would be combing as a single press, De Gruyter Brill. To be exact, De Gruyter is buying Brill. It will be interesting to see the impact this has on these two important presses in our field.

From Paleography to Real Books

The Virtual Paleography Group, first organized on this blog during the dark days of the pandemic, is regrouping this fall. No experience required. Interested parties should contact Zita Toth (KCL).

The Claudio Leonardi Fellowship for medieval Latin studies is seeking applications again. This fellowship is aimed at junior scholars, and can be held for up to six months. Judging from previous winners, the selection committee is particularly focused on supporting editions of texts and other such manuscript-based projects. The application deadline is September 30th, 2023. Details here.

The Journal of the History of Philosophy is advertising two travel fellowships for junior scholars (post-PhD), for the purpose of travel related to research. The application deadline is December 1, 2023. Details here.

The Maimonides Centre (Hamburg) is sponsoring a conference next week on Sceptical Trends in the European Universities of the Early Modern Period. Discussions of late scholastic material will be particularly prominent (August 14-15, 2023, Hamburg).

The Société internationale d’histoire des sciences et de la philosophie Arabes et Islamiques (SIHSPAI) will hold an international colloquium this September in Munich (Sept. 6-8, 2023).

The SIEPM’s annual colloquium is scheduled for September 12-15, 2023, in Trento, and concerns medieval debates over foreknowledge.

The Avicenna Study Group is holding its fourth meeting this September, on the topic “A Hidden Treasure: Editorial, Historical, and Philosophical Issues in Avicenna’s ‘Minor’ Works (rasāʾil)” (Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, 13-15 September, 2023).

The Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medievale (SISPM) meets September 20-22, 2023, in Rome, on the philosophy of the twelfth century.

The Society of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy is sponsoring several sessions at the annual conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy (Liverpool, April 8-10, 2024). Proposals for individual papers or for whole symposia are welcomed, and should be sent to Zita Toth by September 15, 2023.

The Center for Thomistic Studies and the Thomas Aquinas Society are sponsoring a series of sessions at the International Congress of Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), which runs May 9-11, 2024. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2023. Details here.

Anna Marmodoro and Rodrigo Ballon-Villanueva are organizing a conference on Augustine on Relations for next March, in Oxford (March 11-12, 2024). Graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply. The deadline for sending in an abstract is November 15th, 2023.

If there’s still anyone out there who’s into actual printed books, you might like to know that Brill is currently holding its annual summer sale, with 50% off all titles. The discount code, good until the end of September, is 71645.

Postdocs and conferences: Spring 2023

The Human Abilities project in Berlin is advertising another postdoc, in medieval or early modern philosophy. The application deadline is April 16, 2023. Details here.

Kristell Trego (Fribourg) is advertising a one-year postdoc in medieval philosophy. The position requires fluency in French and a good knowledge of German and English. The application deadline is March 30, 2023. Details here.

The History of Philosophy Forum at Notre Dame is again advertising their Small Grants Program, to be used for travel and accommodation while doing research in South Bend. I fear the application deadline was yesterday, March 15, but perhaps a slight extension could be granted. (If not, well, make a plan to apply next year.)

The Vicious, Sinful, Antisocial Workshop runs, at the start of April, in hybrid format (April 3-4, 2023, Jyväskylä).

The annual Journée Incipit takes place in Paris on April 1, 2023. Details here.

Tobias Hoffmann (Sorbonne) has asked me to announce that the Conférences Pierre Abélard will be delivered in Paris on April 4, 5, 11, and 12 (2023), on the topic Construire la volonté. Yours truly will be giving these lectures, in French. (There is also talk of live-streaming the lectures.)

There’s a conference in Bonn this May on Scotism and Platonism: A New Appraisal (May 25-26, 2023).

Stockholm University is hosting a three-day conference in May on The Mechanization of the Natural World, 1300-1700 (May 25-28, 2023).

The Cohn Institute in Tel Aviv is sponsoring a hybrid workshop this June on Analogy and Justification in Premodern Science (June 21-22, 2023). The cfp deadline is March 31.

KU Leuven is holding a conference this fall on the Aristoteles Latinus: 1973-2023: Celebrating Half a Century of Aristoteles Latinus in Leuven” (October 25-27, 2023). The submission deadline was yesterday, March 15, but perhaps a grace period would be allowed.

I’ve recently discovered a popular essay by Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins), posted last fall, arguing that “it’s shocking that histories of medieval philosophy celebrate only Christian thinkers, ignoring Islamic and Jewish thought.” I suspect that this is a sentiment our field has already been persuaded of, for some years now, but this is perhaps a salutary reminder of something we need to practice in fact, not just endorse in principle.

News of February 2023

Ana María Mora-Márquez (Gothenburg) is advertising a three-year postdoc to work in her project on Reassessing Aristotelian Science. “The general aim of the project is to investigate Aristotelian philosophy of science as a likely precursor of contemporary social epistemology of science.” The application deadline is February 28, 2023. Details here.

Harvard is advertising a postdoc, renewable for up to three years, in the history of philosophy. Applications should be submitted by February 15, 2023. Details here. Scholars in ancient and medieval would seem likely to stand a particularly good chance, given the department’s needs.

The previously mentioned conference next week in Vienna, on Primary and Secondary Causality (February 16-17, 2023), will now run in a hybrid format. Those interested in joining by Zoom can register here.

The Aquinas and the Arabs online international graduate student workshop will run March 17-18, 2023. The application deadline is February 19, 2023. Details here.

UC Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve) is holding a conference in May on Distinction and Identity in Late-Scholastic Thought and Beyond (May 15-17, 2023). Information is available here.

The Angelicum Thomistic Institute is running a summer school on Neo-Confucians and Scholastics on Practical Reasoning, Deliberation, and Choice (Rome, July 13-20, 2023). The seminar is aimed at graduate students and possibly advanced undergraduates. The application deadline is February 28.

The Leo Elders Foundation is sponsoring a junior scholar essay contest. The application deadline is September 1, 2023. Details here.

Emory University is sponsoring an online Working Group on Race and Gender in the Global Middle Ages. I would guess there are no philosophers presently involved in the project, but there ought to be, and I’m sure they’d warmly welcome you! Details here.

Congratulations to Jeffrey Brower (Purdue), who has won a year-long NEH fellowship to pursue his book-in-progress on Aquinas’s ontology of space.

Regarding my previous post, on the prospects for AI technology in medieval research, there are a couple of interesting responses, beneath the original post, by Zita Toth and Nicola Polloni.

A New Year in Medieval Philosophy

As part of her ERC grant on 12th-century logic, Caterina Tarlazzi (Venice) seeks to hire an expert in digital humanities—in particular, an expert in digital scholarly editions. A master’s degree, not a doctorate, is required. Details here. The application deadline is February 8, 2023.

The University of Jyväskylä is advertising two postdocs for Martina Reuter’s project on Gender in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy. I would think the clever medievalist might make a strong case for inclusion in the scope of this program. Application deadline is January 31, 2023. Application details here.

There’s a new journal starting up in the history of philosophy, Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists. It’s published by Brill, and edited by Ruth Hagengruber (Paderborn) and Mary Ellen Waithe (Cleveland State).

The SIEPM has announced the deadlines for its usual slate of prizes and funding opportunities: a junior scholar award (deadline of June 1, 2023); a stipend for junior scholars to study with senior scholars (deadline of May 1, 2023); a subvention for the publication of a monograph. Information can be found here.

Looking up the previous alerted me to an honor that I had been previously unaware, and so had failed to report: the SIEPM’s lifetime achievement award, which is given out only every five years (during the World Congress) was awarded this past August to Sten Ebbesen (Copenhagen). Congratulations Sten!

Next month, Dragos Calma (Dublin) and Tobias Hoffmann (Sorbonne) are sponsoring an in-person conference in Vienna on Primary and Secondary Causality: Medieval Theories at the Crossroads between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism (February 16-17, 2023).

In March there’s an international two-day online conference on the subject What Can the Will Do? It’s being organized by Monika Michałowska (Łódź) and Jenny Pelletier (Gothenburg). It will be entirely on zoom (March 23-24, 2023).

The AAIWG — that’s the Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group, for those not in the know — is planning a conference in late spring in Istanbul, at Marmara University. The cfp deadline is just a couple of days away (January 21, 2023), so act quickly if you’d like to be involved. The dates are May 29–June 1, 2023. More details here.

The Universidad de los Andes is hosting a Congreso Tomista Internacional in June. (There does not seem to be, as yet, information on the web, but inquiries can be sent to congresotomista@gmail.com.) Santiago, June 28-30, 2023. The cfp deadline is March 31, 2023.

The Journal of the History of Philosophy is advertising its annual summer seminar, and this year’s topic is The Ancient Origins of Renaissance and Early Modern Feminism. It will be directed by Marguerite Deslauriers (McGill). The seminar is open to advanced graduate students and recent PhDs, and comes with generous funding. (Montreal, May 15-19, 2023. The application deadline is February 15.)

Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, California) is again hosting a Thomistic Summer Conference. This year’s topic is The Soul in the Philosophy and Theology of St. Thomas (June 15-18, 2023). The cfp deadline is January 31, 2023.

The Lumen Christi Institute is again hosting an interesting roster of summer seminars, aimed at current PhD students, and extending to topics such as Augustine’s City of God and Gregory Nazianzen. Generous funding is available. Details here. Application deadlines are in February.

Online Calculators

Irene Binini (Parma) and Sylvain Roudaut (Stockholm) are running a monthly online seminar on the Oxford Calculators, and the second meeting is this Tuesday, December 6th, at 13.00–15.15 CET. The topic, organized by Monika Michałowska (Łódź), is The Intersections of Time and Ethics/Theology in Richard FitzRalph, Adam Wodeham, Richard Kilvington, and John Ripa.The web page has information on how to register.

There’s a senior position in medieval being advertised at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. The application deadline is December 20th, 2022. Proficiency in Spanish is required.

There’s a conference scheduled for February, in Rome, on Modeling, Idealization and Truth: A Dialogue between Contemporary Philosophy of Science and the Aristotelian Tradition (Angelicum, Feb. 24-25, 2023). There’s still an open call for papers for junior scholars, with a deadline of January 1.

As part of the annual medieval and renaissance conference at St. Louis University (June 12-14, 2023), Susan Brower-Toland (Saint Louis) and Jenny Pelletier (Gothenburg) are organizing a mini-conference on medieval philosophy. Details are at the Pariscope médiéval. The cfp deadline is Jan. 30th, 2023.

The SISPM is holding its 26th meeting in Rome on the subject Le filosofie del XII secolo: Nuovi approcci, diverse prospettive (Sept. 20-22, 2023). The call for papers deadline is January 15, 2023.

Congratulations to Graziana Ciola (Nijmegen) for winning an ERC Starting Grant worth €1.5M, for her project The Impossible and the Imaginable: Late-Medieval Semantics of Impossibility and the Roots of Complex Mathematics. There’s more information about the project at Daily Nous.

Congrulations to Alexander Fidora (Barcelona), who has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award.

Postdoc in Siegen

I just discovered, in my spam filter, information about a postdoc at the University of Siegen (Germany). It is a thee-year position, to work on the DFG-project, “Nikolaus von Kues als Leser Platons und Aristoteles’: Kritische Edition und Studie der Cusanus-Marginalien”. More information at this link. Good paleographic skills are required. The deadline is tomorrow (Nov. 22, 2022), which is the reason for this special post.

Various Reports from the Field (November 2022)

Catholic University of America is advertising three (!) positions, all open-rank (!), particularly aimed at scholars working in ancient philosophy, Neoplatonism, and medieval philosophy. (Well, and also political philosophy.) Review of files begins December 13, 2022.

There’s a two-year postdoc at the University of Strasbourg being advertised, as part of a project on the Circulation of Medieval Knowledge in the 12th Century. The application deadline is December 15, 2022.

The University of Georgia is advertising an endowed professorship, at the senior level, in Jewish Studies. Although the position will be rostered in the Department of Religion, it is described as an “open-specialty search.” Application deadline is December 15, 2022.

The New Narratives Project is advertising 12-month postdocs for scholars who “will conduct research related to the retrieval and recognition of philosophical works by women and individuals from other marginalized groups in both the European and non-European traditions. The project is focused on the historical period from roughly the 9th century through to the early 20th century.” Review of applications begins January 3, 2023.

The Medieval Institute at Notre Dame is again advertising one-year junior faculty fellowships, “designed for junior faculty who currently hold a position in a North American university as an assistant professor.” The application deadline is February 1, 2023.

Emily Corran (UCL/IEA-Paris) and Christophe Grellard (EPHE) have organized an interdisciplinary seminar on Conscience and the Sources of Moral Authority, which will be meeting at the Sorbonne, and online, throughout this academic year. The first meeting is tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 18th, 2022). Details are available here.

Happening today and tomorrow, but still worth mentioning, is an international conference on Jean de Jandun et son temps: Nouvelles perspectives de recherche (Paris, Nov. 17-18, 2022).

Also in Paris, a Journée d’études at the intersection of philosophy and history of science has been announced on the subject, Errare (et perseverare): Erreurs et corrections à la fin du Moyen Âge (December 8, 2022).

Yet another upcoming event in Paris (it must be exhausting) is a two-day conference on La nature au Moyen Âge (Dec. 1-2, 2022).

The British Society for the History of Philosophy is advertising its annual Graduate Essay Prize. The application deadline is November 30, 2022.

The Aquinas and the Arabs International Working Group is holding a conference Istanbul next spring (May 29 – June 1, 2023). The deadline to express interest in attending was yesterday (November 16). If you wish you had known about this earlier, or are hoping that it’s not to late to be involved, contact Brett Yardley, who will at least sign you up for future emails.

The annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Traditions (June 19-21, 2023) has now being announced, on the theme Logos, Logic and Metaphysics. The meeting will be in person, in Milwaukee. Abstracts should be submitted by February 15, 2023.

Finally, from Stephen Presser (Northwestern) ….

News in the Field from October

King’s College London is advertising another lectureship (effectively, a permanent junior faculty position), “in Late Medieval / Early Modern Philosophy in any of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions, especially in the History of Ethics and the Philosophy of Action.” The application deadline is November 15, 2022.

Next week, there’s a conference in Parma on Logic and Modalities in the Late Middle Ages. It will be held in person but also accessible on zoom (Oct. 17-19, 2022).

This year’s Journée thomiste will be on the subject Obéissance et autorité au Moyen Âge (Paris, December 3, 2022).

An international conference on the History of Logic in the Islamic World is planned for this March in Tehran, featuring a distinguished list of keynote speakers. The conference will be run in a hybrid format, partly in person and partly virtual (March 6-8, 2023). The cfp deadline has been extended until Oct. 31, 2022.

LMU Munich is organizing a conference for this coming May on Animals in Greek, Arabic, and Latin Philosophy (May 18-20, 2023). The cfp deadline is Oct. 31, 2022.

The Avicenna Study Group continues next fall: its fourth meeting will concern Avicenna’s “minor works” (Aix-en-Provence, Sept. 13-15, 2023).

The annual SIEPM colloquium for next year will be in Trento (Italy), on the subject Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination (Sept. 13-15, 2023; cfp deadline Jan. 31, 2023).

Alfred Freddoso continues to make progress on his complete online English translation of the Summa theologiae. He’s now approaching the end of the 2a2ae. This is by far the best complete translation available, and for anyone who’s still learning to read scholastic Latin, you really couldn’t do better than to work through this translation side by side with Aquinas’s Latin, available at the Corpus Thomisticum. Fred tells me that, if you are using this translation and find mistakes in it, he’d love to know about them.