News from March 2026

Magdalena Bieniak (Warsaw) is advertising a postdoc devoted to the study of logical paradoxes in the Latin Middle Ages. The application deadline is May 19, 2026. Details here.

The new ERC synergy project MOSAIC (mapping occult sciences across Islamicate cultures) is advertising two post-doc positions at Louvain-la-Neuve, both aimed at specialists in classical Arabic thought. The application deadline is June 10, 2026. Details can be found here.

Russell Friedman’s new ERC project TRANSFORM (on late scholastic hylomorphism) is advertising a four-year PhD position in Leuven. (This is not a postdoc, but funding for someone with an MA who seeks to pursue a PhD.) The application deadline is April 6, 2026. Details here.

The London International Paleography School is running a one-week in-person summer school (June 8-12, 2026). Various classes are on offer, most notably one on Textual Editing, focused on philosophical and theological texts, led by Zita Toth (KCL) and Daniel Hadas (KCL). The application deadline is May 22, 2026. The tuition fee is fairly modest. LIPS also runs various online courses each spring.

The Max Planck Institute is hosting a one-week summer seminar on Albert the Great’s De anima. Some funding to cover expenses is available (June 6-10, 2026, in Berlin). The application deadline is March 30.

The Angelicum Thomistic Institute is again sponsoring a summer seminar on Asian philosophy and scholasticism, on the topic “Mind in Neo-Confucianism and European Scholasticism.” The seminar will be led by Giorgio Pini (Fordham) and Bryan Van Norden (Vassar). Dates are June 18-17, 2026, in Rome. Funding to cover expenses is available. The application deadline is April 15. Details here.

The Global Scholasticism Academic Network is sponsoring an online talk in one week by Fabrizio Amerini (Parma), on “Interpreting Aristotle: Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and Gregory of Rimini on Matter.” Details on this and other lectures in the series are available here.

In 10 days, Tatiana Barkovskiy (Cambridge) will be giving an online talk, as part of the Cambridge Festival, on the question, “Did women do philosophy in the Middle Ages?” That’s Monday, March 23, 2026. Details here.

The annual Journées Incipit runs in Paris on March 27-28, 2026, featuring a keynote lecture by William Duba (Fribourg).

On July 20-21, 2026, there is a two-day conference in Freiburg on the subject of The Human–World Relationship in the Islamic Mystical–Philosophical Tradition. The cfp deadline is April 15, 2026. Nothing yet seems available on the web, but inquiries can be sent here.

The Thomas Aquinas College of New England is running a Thomistic Summer Conference on the theme Metaphysics and Theology in St. Thomas Aquinas (July 30-August 2, 2026, in Northfield, Massachusetts). The cfp deadline is April 19. Details here.

The Society for the European History of Ideas is sponsoring a conference at the end of August on Matter and Material Causation. Anna Marmodoro (SLU) will be giving the keynote address (August 28-30, 2026, in Leuven). Details here.

Julian Giglio (Buenos Aires) is offering an online doctoral seminar, beginning in April, on political and economic philosophy at the University of Paris in the 13th and 14th centuries. The seminar will be held in Spanish, but interested participants with merely intermediate-level Spanish are welcomed to enroll. Details here.

The Brepols series, Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions of the Middle Ages, has now published six volumes, and general editor Richard Taylor (Marquette) has put out a call for further proposals. The aim of the series is to publish work that engages with two or more of the Abrahamic traditions.

Congratulations to Gregory Doolan (CUA), who was been appointed the inaugural Msgr. John F. Wippel Endowed Chair in Thomistic Metaphysics. There is a ceremony to honor his installation on April 23, 2026.

Alfred L. Ivry (1935-2026)

Professor Alfred Ivry died yesterday at the age of 91. A graduate of Brooklyn College, Brandeis and Oxford, he taught over the years at Cornell, Ohio State, Brandeis and NYU, where he was the Skirball Professor of Jewish Thought until his retirement in 2005. His nine books and hundred-some articles contribute both to Jewish and Islamic scholarship, in Hebrew and Arabic, ranging from careful scholarly editions to introductory guides, as for instance his Philosophical Guide to Maimonides’ Guide, published by Univ. of Chicago Press in 2016.

News from January 2026

The Australian Catholic University is advertising two positions at the level of lecturer or senior lecturer, one in the history of philosophy and the other in the history of ethics. The application deadline for each is February 2, 2026.

Back in the fall, Irene Binini (Parma) won an ERC starting grant worth around 1.5M euros, on the topic Fictional and Impossible entities, Counterpossible reasoning and Thought Experiments. A study of medieval theories of impossibility and their contemporary relevance. (Congratulations!) She’s now advertising three postdoctoral positions in Parma, two of which are aimed at medievalists working on logic, natural philosophy, or mathematics. The positions can run for up to five years, and knowledge of Italian is not required. Details here.

Next year it’s time again for the SIEPM’s international congress, which is by far the largest event in the field, and which happens only once every five years. This meeting will be held in Zagreb (August 23-27, 2027). The theme is Philosophy in Dialogue in the Middle Ages. Preliminary details here. (This year’s colloquium, as previously announced, will be in Lisbon on September 2-4. You’ve still got until February 7th to put in a proposal for this year.)

The project Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus (Munich) is offering a three-year doctoral position starting in October 2026. An MA degree is required, as well as English and an excellent command of Latin and/or Arabic. The application deadline is March 31, 2026. Details here.

The NEH continues to fund philosophy, and this coming summer they are funding a Summer Institute on Aristotle’s Psychology and Contemporary Philosophy (Texas A&M, June 1-12, 2026). These are funded research opportunities aimed at both faculty and advanced graduate students, and there’s an impressive list of senior faculty involved in running the Institute. It’s being organized by Jose Luis Bermudez (Texas A&M) and Victor Caston (Michigan). The application deadline is March 6.

The Centre for the History of Philosophy at Notre Dame Australia is advertising a fully funded graduate research position (MA or PhD) to study Jewish philosophy and intellectual history. Details available here.

The History of Philosophy Forum at Notre Dame USA is advertising the grant programs it has offered in previous years: one small grant to fund a research stay at Notre Dame for international researchers, and a second for a one-month summer research stay. The deadline is February 1, 2026. Details here.

Jason Aleksander (San Jose State) is collaborating with some folk at UC Santa Cruz to hold a two-day conference next month, Of Body and Soul: Politics and Eschatology in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean (Santa Cruz, February 18-19, 2026). The whole conference will be live-streamed on Zoom. The program is here.

Henrik Lagerlund and Alexander Stöpfgeshoff are organizing a conference on Nature and Normativity from the 14th to the 17th century (Stockholm, May 28-29, 2026). This is part of the Nature & Norms project. The cfp deadline is February 20, with some funding possible for travel and accommodation.

This year’s Journées Incipit again runs over two days in Paris (March 27-28, 2026), with the keynote lecture by William Duba (Fribourg).

Milo Crimi (Univ. of Montevallo) has recently made the case, on the APA blog, for the place of Marguerite Porete in the philosophical curriculum. See his essay here.

News from November 2025

The University of Regensburg is advertising a two-year Chair of Fundamental Questions of Theology, with responsibility for the funded project “Critical Edition of Medieval Commentaries on the Prologue of the Gospel of John and their Long-Term Philosophical Reception.” The application deadline is in 9 days, November 27, 2025. “Very good command” of German and English is required. I could not find information online, but anyone interested should contact Dr. Konstanze Sommer.

Anna Tropia and Nicoletta Nativo are organizing an international workshop next week at Charles University on the theme “(Once again) Philosophers versus Theologians: Renaissance Averroisms” (November 21-22, 2025, Prague). For more information contact Anna or Nicoletta.

Russell Friedman (Leuven) will be giving an online lecture next week, sponsored by the SMRP, on the subject “Are Human Souls Equal? Capreolus (Jean Cabrol) on Whether Substantial Forms Admit of More and Less.” Monday, November 24, 6-7pm in Leuven / 12-1pm in New York / 9-10am in Los Angeles. Only on Zoom, at https://cuboulder.zoom.us/my/pasnau.

There’s an online monthly reading group underway devoted to Roger Bacon’s Communia mathematica. It is sponsored by the Roger Bacon Research Society and, more specifically, by Clelia Crialesi and Yael Kedar. The presenter will provide an English translation at each meeting, and so knowledge of Latin is not strictly required. For the schedule of meetings see here.

The Conférences Pierre Abélard delivered by José Meirinhos had to be suspended after the first lecture last month, but lectures two through four have been rescheduled for December 16-18, 2025, live at the Sorbonne or on zoom. Details here.

The University of Groningen is hosting a workshop on the philosophy of Francisco Suárez on April 10-11, 2026. The cfp deadline is December 1. Details here.

The University of New Brunswick is holding an international conference next May on “Wisdom from the Middle Ages: Philosophical Contributions from the Abrahamic Traditions” (Fredericton, Canada, May 12-13, 2026). The cfp deadline is January 30, 2026.

The SIEPM’s annual colloquium will take place in Lisbon next September 2-4, on the topic of “Individuum and communitas: From metaphysics to politics.” The cfp deadline is February 7, 2026.

The History of Philosophy Forum at the University of Notre Dame has announced the call for applications for two of its grant programs: 1) the Summer Writing and Research Grants, and 2) the Small Grants Program, both of which support research visits to the Notre Dame campus. The application deadline is February 1, 2026.

The Averroes Edition project is inviting scholars to apply for its 2026 visiting fellowships. Details here. The application deadline is January 12, 2026.

Scott Williams (formerly at UNC Asheville, now at Lyon College in Arkansas) has created a personal website to host electronic copies of the Henry of Ghent Opera omnia. The University of Leuven Press generously allows the images of the critical edition to circulate for free provided the apparatus is not reproduced, and this website is a tremendously useful way to access the text of the edition and see what has been published to date. Scott tells me that Gordon Wilson and Bernd Goehring are seeking funding to work on volume 35, Summa 68-72.

Congratulations to Jari Kaukua (Jyväskylä) for winning a major grant from the Research Council of Finland, which will fund work over the next six years on his project Illuminationist Philosophy in the Islamic World.

Two Exciting SMRP Events

This post is to spread the word about two exciting events that the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy is sponsoring. (Full disclosure: I’m currently president of the SMRP. But the events are exciting.)

First, applications are now being accepted for the 2nd biennial SMRP conference (SLU, June 8-10, 2026). The first of these, at Notre Dame, was very large and lots of fun. This one should be great too, so if you can get to St. Louis in June, you should go! The application for submitting an abstract is December 31st. Details here.

Second, Russell Friedman (Leuven) will giving an online talk later this month. It’s a purely virtual event, intended to follow-up on the success of the online series of talks that I organized during the pandemic. Of course, those were special circumstances. The SMRP intends this as an experiment, to see whether there’s still an audience, globally, for this sort of online-only, occasional event. The talk will last just one hour, on the subject “Are Human Souls Equal? Capreolus (Jean Cabrol) on Whether Substantial Forms Admit of More and Less.” It happens on Monday, November 24, 6-7pm in Leuven / 12-1pm in New York / 9-10am in Los Angeles. Only on Zoom, at https://cuboulder.zoom.us/my/pasnau.

News from September, um make that October 2025

Russell Friedman (Leuven) is advertising two postdoc positions to be associated with his ERC project on “the late scholastic transformation of hylomorphism.” These are three-year positions, with a preferred start date of February 1, 2026. The application deadline is October 20, 2025. Details here.

Les nouvelles conférences Pierre Abélard sont arrivées ! José Meirinhos (University of Porto) gives his first lecture tomorrow (October 7, 2025), followed by a second on October 8th, and two more next week (October 14-15). The theme is Imagination in the Middle Ages. The event takes place at the Sorbonne, but there is a remote option. Further details here.

The Medieval Philosophy Network in the UK is back again this fall, with a meeting in London on November 6, 2025. Remote attendance is possible. Details here.

ASG V runs this December at Ruhr University Bochum. That’s the Fifth International Meeting of the Avicenna Study Group, focused this year on al-Mubāḥaṯāt (Dec. 2-4, 2025). Further information available here.

There’s a conference in Edinburgh this coming April entitled “Thinking about God: Historical Perspectives.” The focus is on the relationship between God and the human mind. The cfp deadline is December 15, 2025. The conference is April 16-17, 2026. Details here.

Ibn Rushd’s 900th birthday anniversary is coming, and the Aquinas and the Arabs International Working Group will be holding two conferences in his honor this next summer: one in Cordoba (May 19-22, 2026) and one in Paris (May 26-29, 2026). The application deadline is very soon, October 15th. Details here.

The 25th European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics runs next June on the topic of “Logic and the Sciences” (Radboud University, Netherlands, June 23-25, 2026). The cfp deadline is November 30, 2025. Accommodations will be provided for all speakers (but not travel expenses). There seems to be no information available on the web yet, but there is an email address: [email protected], so interested parties might reach out there, or else contact the folk at Radboud, e.g. Ciola, Lamprakis, Thakkar, et al.

HOPOS—the international society for the history of philosophy of science—holds its 16th biennial congress next summer at Ohio State University. The cfp deadline is next week, October 15, 2025. The meeting runs June 22-26, 2026 (Columbus, OH). Details here.

Students who might be able to spend some time in Rome this spring should consider applying to the European Diploma in Medieval Studies (DEEM), which focuses on training graduate students in Latin paleography and related skills. All classes are in English (though a working knowledge of Italian is also listed as a prerequisite). The full program runs from January until May, although it is possible to enroll in a shorter portion of the course. The SIEPM-FIDEM is sponsoring a scholarship to the program. The application deadline is December 1, 2024. See details here.

Charles Bolyard (James Madison Univ.) has asked me to spread the word about a huge editorial project he’s involved in, A Cultural History of Wisdom (to be published by Bloomsbury). Chip is editing the medieval volume, and he’s looking for scholars interested in contributing a chapter. You can see the plan for the volume at his website, and by the looks of it he’s making good progress on getting the chapters assigned. But there are a few chapters still in need of authors, so if you’re interested, check it out.

Congratulations to Ide Lévi, who has been appointed maître de conférences at the Sorbonne Université (aka Paris IV). She will be working with Tobias Hoffmann, who holds the chair there as professor of medieval philosophy. (Alas, I have no link. Unlike we Americans, who need several dedicated web pages by the age of 20 to feel good about ourselves, Ide seems to have nothing remotely approaching a presence on the internet!)

Congratulations to Jordan Lavender (Texas A&M), who won the 2025 SMRP Founders’ Prize, for his paper on “The Medieval Scholastic Mind-Body Problem.” Honorable mention went to Matthew Wennemann (Univ. of Colorado) for a paper on “Indeterminate Dimensions and Aquinas’s Change of Mind.” They’ll both be presenting their papers at an SMRP-sponsored session at the Central APA in Chicago in February 2026.

It’s been a while since I’ve given a shout out to the excellent work that Jean-Luc Solère (Boston College) is doing on the SIEPM collection of digital resources. Now is a good time to mention it, because the URL has changed. The new address is https://siepm-digitalresources.bc.edu/. There’s tons of resources here: a catalog of digital books, bibliographies, and much more.

News from August 2025

Silvia Di Vincenzo (Venice) is advertising two multiyear postdocs attached to her ERC project on Arabic logic. Applicants should have a solid command of classical Arabic and an ability to read Arabic manuscripts. The application deadline is Sept. 12, 2025. Further details here.

There’s a multi-day conference next month in Leuven on Hylomorphic Theories in Their Institutional Context, 1275-1350 (Sept. 8-10, 2025). Those not able to attend in person are welcome to join by Zoom. Details here.

The annual SIEPM colloquium is coming soon, in Buenos Aires (Sept. 3-5, 2025), on the topic “Chaos and Order in Medieval Philosophy.” For those not attending in person, it’s possible to follow the sessions online. Roughly half the talks are in English, half in Spanish. The live stream can be accessed here. The program is available here.

There’s a new journal in the history of philosophy, Journal for New Narratives in the History of Philosophy. Its editors describe it as an “an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal promoting leading-edge research relating to new narratives in any period in the history of philosophy. We are keenly interested in promoting discussion of and scholarship on diverse, underrepresented, and non-canonical approaches, themes, and figures in a wide variety of world philosophical traditions.” Details here.

Stephen Menn is moving to the University of Toronto, beginning in January 2026, to take up the Walsh Chair in the History of Philosophy. (This is the newly endowed senior position in the history of philosophy that I mentioned in a previous post.) UT’s announcement is here.

Arthur Stephen McGrade (1935-2025)

I have just learned that Steve McGrade died earlier this summer. The following memorial is due to Stephen Lahey:

Arthur Stephen McGrade, emeritus professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut Storrs, died at his home in Florida on 11 June 2025. Steve was a dedicated scholar, a skilled teacher, and a profoundly gracious colleague, and remained active in his research until very late in his life. He had a Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University, and was a Fellow of Clare College in Cambridge. He began at the University of Connecticut Storrs in 1964, where he remained until he retired in 1997. Steve was known for his expertise in medieval political thought, especially that of William Ockham, and in the development of Anglican theology, particularly the work of Richard Hooker. Among his many publications are The Political Thought of William Ockham (1974), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (1997), and he edited William Ockham A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government (1992),  The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy (2003), and Richard Hooker Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity A Critical Edition with Modern Spelling (2013). Further, with John Kilcullen he edited Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts: Ethics and Politics (2000), and William Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor (1995).
            He was very active in professional societies, and regularly gave papers at conferences throughout the world. What these words do not capture is his lively humor, his delighted laugh, his kind and serious guidance of students, and his commitment to living a life defined by Episcopal Christianity. These qualities are what people will remember about Steve, and why they will smile when they think of him.

ERC grants, and other news from July 2025

The University of Technology in Nuremberg is searching for a senior scholar who focuses on the history of the philosophy of science and epistemology, “preferably with a focus on pre-modern or early modern philosophy.” The application deadline is August 17, 2025. Details here.

Leuven University is advertising a position for a PhD candidate under the supervision of recently appointed Professor Jenny Pelletier. The research would be done in the context of her project on the metaphysics of social groups in late medieval philosophy. The application deadline is August 18, for a position that would begin, preferably, on November 1, 2025. Details here.

St. Louis University is hosting a major SMRP conference next summer (June 8-10, 2026). This will be the second time that the SMRP has run a stand-alone conference. The first, in Notre Dame in 2021, was a very large affair, and I expect the SLU conference to be equally great. (Going forward, the SMRP hopes to hold these conferences biennially. There are plans already afoot for 2028 at Purdue.) Details about the SLU conference are available here. The cfp deadline is December 31, 2025.

The SMRP is also sponsoring a session next April 23-25, 2026, at the annual conference of the BSHP, in London. Proposals for individual papers or symposia are welcomed. The cfp deadline is September 15. Details here.

The SIHSPAI (don’t ask me to spell it out, but it’s for Arabic material) is holding its next conference in Ben Guerir, Morocco (June 3-5, 2026). The cfp deadline is September 15, 2025. Details here.

The ERC Advanced Grant winners were announced last month, and medievalists did amazingly well. Most notably, there were two winning grants specifically within medieval philosophy:

In addition, if you look at the whole long list of grants, you’ll find there are other closely adjacent grant winners: Maria Angeles Utrero (Spanish National Research Council) won for a project on monasticism in early Islamic al-Andalus; Peter Pormann (Manchester) won for a project on Gesius’ commentaries on Galen; Sarah Bowen (Aga Khan University) won for a project on Transforming the Story of the Arabic Book, 700-1800. Compared to other fields within the humanities, medievalists did amazingly well.

All this is quite important to the field. To explain, for those who don’t work in Europe, these are the most desirable grants available in Europe, and the “advanced” grants are for senior scholars. ERCs run for five years and typically include funding for PhD students, postdocs, and conferences. So you’ll be seeing these projects play out in the field for some years to come, and junior scholars are advised to keep an eye on the opportunities that will become available.

News from June 2025

The Philosophy Department at the Universidad de Chile is looking to hire a specialist in medieval philosophy. Knowledge of Spanish is mandatory. The search closes on June 27, 2025. Details here.

The University of Texas at Austin is searching for a new director for its Center for Jewish Studies. The appointment is at the rank of full professor. The application deadline is September 15, 2025. Details here.

The Society for the European History of Ideas (SEHI) will be holding the first of its four causes conferences next fall. This first meeting will be on form and formal causation (Károli University, Budapest, September 10-12, 2025). The cfp deadline is next week, June 10. Details here.

King’s College London is hosting a conference next week (June 13-14) on Bridges between Parallel Paths: Arabic-Islamic and Latin Christian Medieval Philosophies. The conference meets in London, but online participation is possible.

Ruhr University Bochum is hosting a three-day workshop next week, The Reception and Transformation of the Late Ancient Knowledge Tradition in the Arabic-Muslim World. This is the first workshop of the newly established Avicenna Study Center in Bochum (June 11-13, 2025).

Durham University is sponsoring a conference in April 2026 to honor the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’s death. The conference aims to extend to both academic and non-academic engagement with Franciscanism. The deadline for submitting a proposal is October 30, 2025. Details here.

Fabrizio Amerini (Parma) has created a web page dedicated to Hervaeus Natalis. It’s still a work in progress, but already has much useful information.

Congratulations to Thomas Ward, currently at Baylor University, who has accepted a tenured position, beginning this fall, at the University of Texas Austin.