News

Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the 2018 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He is the seventh living Notre Dame philosophy faculty member to be honored and is to be inducted at an October ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Michael Waddell, director of the master of autism studies program at Saint Mary’s, called for a more complete understanding of autistic identities — acknowledging both the struggles and gifts of individuals with autism — during a presentation Wednesday. In the lecture, Waddell read from his personal work exploring autism in relation to the Catholic faith and said he plans to publish a book on the subject in the future.…

One week into her senior year, Natasha Reifenberg headed to an academic health conference in El Salvador, presenting a policy brief based in research she had been involved in for the last two years. An opportunity usually reserved for distinguished academics, the trip was just one of many highlights in an outstanding undergraduate career that includes internships at the Global Fund for Women and United Nations Development Program and independent research...

The introductory philosophy course, God and the Good Life (GGL), got a face life last week! Prof. Meghan Sullivan (along with Kate Finley, Christine Grandy, and Kate Garry, respectively) has been working hard to develop this new website that captures the essence of GGL. As Dr. Sullivan puts it: "We have a new and significantly more awesome website for God and the Good Life! More interactive essays! More media! More TRUTH...

The legacy of Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga will continue on for years thanks to support from the John Templeton Foundation. He was named the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate this spring — joining the ranks of previous winners Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles Taylor, Jean Vanier, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama — and his work will now be chronicled in a series of 10 short, animated videos, which will present...

Therese Cory, an assistant professor of philosophy, has been awarded a Philip L. Quinn Fellowship by the National Humanities Center, a private institute of advanced study in North Carolina. Cory is one of 34 fellows chosen from among 630 applicants and the fourth Arts and Letters faculty member to receive an NHC fellowship since 2010. It will allow her to spend the year working on her book manuscript, Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Intellect:...

Observations form the basis for our most important scientific experiments, as well as some of our most important human experiences. But 20th century physics taught us that the structure of observations is full of surprises. For example, the strange world of quantum theory taught us that putative quantities like "the position and the momentum of a particle at a given time" are in fact unobservable. This is not just a...

Meghan Sullivan (Professor of Philosophy) has teamed up with Stephen Grimm (Professor of Philosophy at Fordham and a Notre Dame Ph.D. graduate) and Stephen Angle (Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan) to lead an NEH Summer Institute on teaching philosophy as a way of life.  The Institute — ``Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life’’ — will gather faculty from across the country who are interested in developing courses that explore the...

Grad Student, Kate Finley, has won a Center for Social Concerns Course Development grant.

Congratulations to Nicholas Teh for winning one of four research groups with grants from the Global Gateway Faculty Research Awards (GGFRA) for his work at the London Global Gateway titled “New Directions in Space, Time, and Matter: A Research Initiative by the University of Notre Dame-University of London Philosophy of Science Consortium.”

Grad Student, Alex Stern, has received a very prestigious and competitive yearlong Post-doctoral Research Fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, beginning fall 2017.

Prof. Michael Rea has just been named John A. O’Brien Chair of Philosophy. This is the oldest endowed chair at Notre Dame, and is especially fitting in this case, since it was previously held by Mike’s dissertation director, Al Plantinga. 

The Templeton Prize, valued at  approximately $1.4 million, is one of the world’s largest annual awards given to an individual. It is meant to honor “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.” Plantinga, the most important philosopher of religion of the last century, taught in the Philosophy Department at Notre Dame for almost 30 years before...

Professor Michael Rea gave this years Gifford Lectures held at University of St. Andrews from March 27th – April 5th. Past and present Notre Dame faculty to give the lectures include Alasdair MacIntyre, Alvin Plantinga, and Peter van Inwagen. The Gifford Lectures are the most prestigious lectures in the world for the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. You can find Prof. Rea’s full lectures here…

Grad Students Liz Jackson and Becca Chan have won the coveted Hammes Bookstore Basketball 5-on-5 tournament. Their teammates include undergraduate students Amanda Geiger (Finance and Political Science), Allie Griffith (English and American Studies), and Jackie Collins (Management Consulting). The game was a fight until the end, with Becca making the game-winning shot. 84 teams competed in this years women’s bracket.  For more information on Bookstore basketball, visit their website…

Prof. Janet Kourany has been selected as the second recipient of the Gender Studies Program’s Marian Mullin Hancock Teaching Award.   “Dr. Kourany’s students described her as a “generous and dedicated mentor” who expresses a genuine interest in her students and cares for them “both in the classroom and outside of it.” Students wrote that her classes – on topics of feminist philosophy of science and feminist epistemology, as well as...

This award recognizes graduate students who demonstrate excellent teaching at Notre Dame. Each recipient will receive an award certificate presented by Dr. Laura Carlson, Vice President and Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School. Congratulations, Paul!     …

Hannah specializes in the philosophy of biology and evolutionary game theory, and adds to the department’s strengths in the philosophy of science. She will be starting 2018-19.  Visit her web page at www.hannahrubin.net/  …

Aaron Wells won the Markus Herz Prize from the North American Kant Society for his paper “Mechanical Inexplicability and Extensive Magnitudes in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.” This is an award given every year to the best graduate student paper presented at one of the regional meetings of the NAKS. Aaron is the second consecutive Notre Dame graduate student to win the prize (Naomi Fisher won in 2015), and the fourth Notre Dame student...

What conceptual models shape our thinking about the mind and its activities or experiences?  The project is to recover a neglected model of the mind in Thomas Aquinas, according to which knowing is construed in terms of the realization, in the human knower, of a certain kind of being with certain exotic properties.  By examining the philosophical implications of this “metaphysics of intellect,” the book will provide new perspective on...