Speakers

Stella was most recently Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University. Her main research areas are critical history of philosophy, philosophies of sex and gender, critical philosophy of race and plant philosophy. She is the author of The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas (Athlone/Continuum, 2000), Plato and Sex (Polity, 2010), How to Read Beauvoir (Granta/Norton, 2006), and Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has also edited collections on Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity (with Peter Osborne, 2002), The Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone (with Mandy Merck, 2010) and Conjunctions: Humanatures, Reproduction, Disjunctions (2025). She is currently Co-I on a Wellcome Trust-funded project, ‘Contragestive Time: Pregnant Uncertainties in Fertility Control’.

Dr Komarine Romdenh‑Romluc is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where her research sits within the phenomenological tradition and focuses on embodied experience, agency, and the intersection of mind, body, culture, and identity. She has written extensively on Maurice Merleau‑Ponty and the nature of perception and action, including the Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau‑Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception. Her work also engages contemporary issues — from hermeneutical injustice to questions raised by Frantz Fanon’s thought on culture, power, and freedom — and she explores the roles played by art and creative practice in experiences of diaspora and belonging. She co‑edits the Routledge Research in Phenomenology series.

Dr Leonie Smith is Lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University, where she directs the undergraduate programmes in Philosophy and PPE and is co-director of the Ethics, Values and Policy initiative. Her research in social and political philosophy examines the foundations of socioeconomic injustice and its impact on policy, welfare, media, social media, and education. She is Chair of the Advisory Board for the Philosophy in Prison charity and has contributed to discussions of pedagogy in the UK, US, and Norway, particularly through her work on Class in the Classroom. Alongside this, she engages with initiatives addressing structural barriers to education: as a member of the advisory council for The Access Project, as a mentor for Minorities and Philosophy UK, and through the Lancaster University Success Programme, supporting students from under-resourced backgrounds.

Dr Jon Bebb is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. His research explores how ideas of what is ‘normal’ shape areas of social life, influencing how marginalised groups, including people in poverty and those with mental health conditions, are treated. He is active in widening participation in philosophy, having organised undergraduate events for Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) and co-developed the Thought Experiments in Schools Project, supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He has collaborated extensively with the Philosophy in Prison charity, delivering introductory and advanced courses, developing remote learning materials, serving as Vice-Chair of the advisory board, and contributing to the British Academy-funded Prison Voices project.

Barbara Arneil is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, specialising in the global history of anti-colonial thought and the study of identity, liberalism, and colonialism. Her work examines the intersections of gender, disability, social trust, diversity, and global citizenship. She is the author of John Locke and America (OUP, 1996), Feminism and Politics (Blackwell, 1999; Chinese edition, 2005), Diverse Communities: The Problem with Social Capital (CUP, 2006), and Domestic Colonies (OUP, 2017), and has co-edited volumes on sexual justice, cultural justice, and disability in political theory. Her current research explores the theoretical distinctions between imperialism and colonialism and the foundations of an ‘organic political theory’. She is Principal Investigator on a VPRI research grant and has been Past President of the Canadian Political Science Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Member of the Order of Canada.