[SydPhil] USyd Conference on Women Philosophers - 25th–27th of November

[Campbell Rider]

You are warmly invited to attend a conference on women in the history of philosophy, hosted at the University of Sydney this November.

"The Natural and the Beautiful: Women Philosophers on Nature, Beauty and Art"
An International Conference at the University of Sydney
A collaboration between "Extending New Narratives" SSHRC (Canada) major award and “Women Philosophers on the Natural and the Human" ARC Future Fellowship (Dalia Nassar)

Organisers: Dalia Nassar and Campbell Rider
25th–27th of November, 2026
10:00 – 5:00 pm
In-person only at the University of Sydney

Please see below for more information and the list of speakers. A full conference program and registration link will be circulated shortly.

Overview:

This conference proposes that women philosophers made important and distinctive contributions to thinking about both the natural and the beautiful – and their relation – and aims to uncover these contributions and their continuing significance.

Women were often identified with ‘nature’ and the ’natural’, and they had to negotiate their status as both natural and human. How did they do this? And in what ways and to what extent did their status as both ’natural’ and ‘human’ influence their thinking about nature and the place of the human within it?

In turn, when women turned to writing philosophy, they often berated their male colleagues for failing to grapple with and locate philosophical questions in lived experience. In contrast, they sought to give philosophy a more concrete, more ‘lived’ character. They often did this through aesthetics, understood both in the general sense, as the study of perception, and in a more limited sense, as the study of the experiences of beauty. How did their interest in aesthetics support their aims of grounding philosophy in lived experience? And in what ways were their philosophies of art and beauty connected to their philosophies of the natural and the human? This conference invites speakers to consider some or any of these questions.

Confirmed speakers include:

Emily Hulme — University of Sydney
Francesca Iannelli — Roma Tre University
Sam Kaldas — University of Notre Dame Australia
Dalia Nassar — University of Sydney
Rodney Parker - King’s University College at Western University
Andrew Poe — Australian Catholic University
Campbell Rider — University of Sydney
Rebecca Rozelle-Stone — University of North Dakota
Fedra Cabrera Solano — Harvard University
Scott Stephens — ABC Religion and Ethics
Catherine Wesselinoff — University of Notre Dame Australia

For more information, email campbell.rider at sydney.edu.au

Campbell Rider
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Discipline of Philosophy | University of Sydney