An art historian, curator, and scholar, Ilaria Puri Purini comes to the Academy from the Contemporary Art Society in London, where she has served as curator of programs, working with contemporary artists across Britain, with a special focus on expanding art-historical narratives and practices. She has also served in curatorial roles at the Victoria and…
Pablo Tinio is Associate Professor and Chair of the Educational Foundations Department at Montclair State University. He is Co-Editor of the Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts and past Editor of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Dr. Tinio’s research is focused on the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the…
Madeleine Gross is an artist and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Madeleine is a leading researcher in the psychology of curiosity, creativity, and personality development. Her work explores how curiosity acts as a catalyst for positive development and human flourishing. Madeleine bridges neuroscience and applied psychology to design interventions that foster…
Sir James Loy MacMillan is one of today’s most successful composers and performs internationally as a conductor. He is currently Artistic Director at The Cumnock Tryst in Scotland and Professor of Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at St. Mary’s College, St Andrews. MacMillan was composer and conductor with the BBC Philharmonic from 2000 to 2009,…
George Corbett is Professor of Theology in the School of Divinity at University of St Andrews. Prior to joining the School of Divinity in 2015, he held positions as Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy, Trinity College, and Affiliated Lecturer, University of Cambridge, where he taught English literature, Italian literature, and theology. He received his BA…
Taylor Worley is the Visiting Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College in Illinois. In 2021, he awarded a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust for a project titled “Thinking About Thinking: Conceptual Art in the Contemplative Tradition.” Dr. Worley served as the Visiting Associate Professor of Faith and Culture and the Managing Director…
Murray Smith is a film theorist and philosopher of art based at the University of Kent, where he is Professor of Film and co-director of the Aesthetics Research Centre. Professor Smith’s research interests are film theory broadly, but especially the ‘philosophy of film’, film theory informed by analytic philosophy, and classical film theory; cognitive and…
Dr. Bermudez’s interests are focused in the relationship between architecture, culture and spirituality through the lens of phenomenology and neuroscience. He has widely lectured, led symposia and published in this area, including “Transcending Architecture: Contemporary Views on Sacred Space” (CUA Press, 2015) and “Architecture, Culture and Spirituality” (Routledge, 2015). His current research uses neuroscience to…
Jonathan Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University, where he teaches composition, music theory, and cognition at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Jonathan is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2016 winner of the Rome Prize. He was the founding co-director of the Stanford Institute…
Jamal J. Elias is the Director of the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in Islamic thought, literature and history in Western, Central and South Asia, with a focus on Sufism and Visual Culture. He regularly teaches courses in his areas of specialization, on Islam and modernity and on comparative religion,…
Stacie Friend is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She previously taught at Birkbeck from 2005-2007 and again from 2014-2023, having taught in between at Heythrop College, University of London. Her research is at the intersection of aesthetics, language and mind, especially as these pertain to our engagement with works of fiction.…
Olu Ogunnaike is an artist whose practice sits between experiments in sculpture, drawing, performance, and installation. His work centers around the use of materials—in particular wood—which he directly correlates with identity, both personal and communal. His interest lies in the investigation of the rituals and events that inform our sense of individual and collective self-becoming.…