DOUG BLOMBERG, PHD, EDD, is the academic dean and a professor of philosophy of education at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He was a teacher, teacher educator, and administrator in Australia before immigrating to Canada in 2003. He has an enduring research interest in how a conception of the structure of knowledge influences views of learning and schooling. His early formulation of a “ways of knowing” thesis has developed in the context of a biblical perspective on wisdom, as addressed in A Vision with a Task (Baker, 1993), Wisdom and Curriculum (Dordt College Press, 2007), and various articles and chapters.
ALLYSON CARR is the associate director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. She received her PHD in history of philosophy in May 2012 with work focusing on philosophical hermeneutics, medieval narrative philosophy, and Christine de Pizan studies. She is also interested in feminist ethics and twentieth-century continental philosophy. When not at work or research, Carr enjoys tending her herb garden, writing poetry and fiction, and spending time with her family.
JEFFREY DUDIAK is an associate professor of philosophy at the King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta. His principal work is in the area of continental philosophy of religion and ethics, especially the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and in Quaker religious thought.
OLAF ELLEFSON is an instructor at York University in Toronto. His interests lie primarily in the philosophy of language, particularly issues related to reference and truth. He recently defended his dissertation, entitled “Truth, Reference, and Intuition,” in which he articulates a Davidsonian theory of reference that can accommodate divergent folk responses to various thought experiments in the philosophy of language.
GERRIT GLAS is a psychiatrist and philosopher. As a psychiatrist he is director of residency training in psychiatry at the Dimence Institute for Mental Health in the Netherlands and a practicing psychiatrist there. As a philosopher he teaches and writes on issues at the interface between philosophy, psychiatry, neuroscience, and ethics. He has held several chairs in philosophy and has occupied the Dooyeweerd chair in the faculty of philosophy at the VU University Amsterdam since 2008.
SR GILL K. GOULDING CJ is a member of the Congregation of Jesus and an associate professor of systematic theology at Regis College, the Jesuit graduate school of theology at the University of Toronto, where she also serves as the advanced degree director. Her primary fields of research are the trinity and ecclesiology and the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. She is currently revising a manuscript on ecclesiology and researching complementarities between the work of Bernard Lonergan and Balthasar on the trinity. Pope Benedict appointed her as a theological expert to the October 2012 Synod of Bishops in Rome on “The New Evangelisation and the Transmission of the Christian Faith.”
JAY A. GUPTA is an assistant professor of philosophy at Mills College in Oakland, California. His research background and interests are in nineteenth-century philosophy, with particular emphasis on Hegel. He has done recent work on Hegel’s critique of modern moral consciousness and on the recovery of virtue ethics in the modern age. Both are aspects of a general research program that critically investigates the character and consequences of ethical thought and discourse in cultural modernity.
CLARENCE JOLDERSMA is a professor of education at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His research interests include philosophy of education, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, Levinas studies, and environmental sustainability. He has co-edited two volumes of essays by Nicholas Wolterstorff, titled Educating for Shalom and Educating for Life. His recent published essays include “A Levinasian Environmental Ethic,” “Putting Arendt’s Work and Labor back in School,” and “Providential Deism, Divine Reason, and Locke’s Educational Theory.” When he is not writing, he can be found working on projects in his woodshop or playing ball hockey with his grandson.
MATTHEW J. KLAASSEN is a doctoral student at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, where he has served as a research assistant at the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics. He is working on a dissertation about Immanuel Kant’s theory of reflecting judgment.
JOHN JUNG PARK is a PHD graduate student in the philosophy department at Duke University. His areas of interest are in ethics and philosophy of mind.
PAMELA J. REEVE is an associate professor of philosophy at St Augustine’s Seminary, a member college of the Toronto School of Theology. Her research interests include the anthropology of Thomas Aquinas, philosophy of mysticism, and current debates in political theology.
AMY D. RICHARDS received a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, New College School of Divinity, in 2010. At the time of writing her paper for the Truth Matters conference, Richards was finishing a two-year post at Calvin College as an assistant professor of media studies in the Communication Arts and Sciences Department. Currently she works part-time with the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, developing programs on international affairs and foreign policy. Much of the rest of her time she and her husband, Jason Duncan, spend in the truth-telling gaze of their new son, Leo.
CALVIN SEERVELD is an emeritus senior member in philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. A graduate of Calvin College and the University of Michigan, he studied philosophy, comparative literature, and theology in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy, and received a PHD from the VU University Amsterdam. He taught philosophy many years at Trinity Christian College, Illinois, before specializing in aesthetics. His publications include Rainbows for the Fallen World, a Seerveld reader titled In The Fields of the Lord, and a translation from the Hebrew of the biblical Song of Songs arranged for choral reading performance.
RONNIE SHUKER is a doctoral student at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, research assistant at the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics, and a freelance journalist with master’s degrees in both philosophy and journalism.
ADAM SMITH is a PHD candidate in the Politics Department at Brandeis University. He has a BA from Olivet Nazarene University and an MA from the Institute for Christian Studies. His research focuses on democratic theory, religion and politics, and American political thought. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.
JOHN VAN RYS is a graduate of Dalhousie University and a professor of English at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, where he teaches Canadian literature. Dr Van Rys does scholarly work on Canadian literature and writes on a range of modern authors, including Al Purdy, Ernest Buckler, Margaret Avison, and Alice Munro. His current work focuses on violence, suffering, and trauma in Canadian literature, especially in Canadian historical fiction. He also teaches expository writing and has co-authored texts on writing, including The College Writer and The Research Writer.
DARREN WALHOF is an associate professor of political science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where he teaches political theory and American constitutional law. Among his research interests are philosophical hermeneutics, democratic theory, religion and politics, and Reformation political thought. In 2010 he was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. He is co-editor with Derek Peterson of The Invention of Religion, and he has published articles in political theory, history, and philosophy journals. When not studying political theory he is likely to be found biking, playing hockey, or singing.
MATTHEW WALHOUT earned his PHD in physics from the University of Maryland, and since 1996 he has served as a professor of physics at Calvin College, where he is currently the dean for research and scholarship. In his main line of laboratory research, he uses laser light to trap atoms and to study the formation of extremely weak molecular bonds. He turns to philosophy in order to understand when, why, and how people can become normatively bound by scientific thought and speech.
LAMBERT ZUIDERVAART is a professor of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies and a professor of philosophy, status only, at the University of Toronto, where he is an associate member of the graduate faculty in philosophy. His primary scholarly interests lie in continental philosophy, critical theory, hermeneutics, social philosophy, and philosophy of art, with emphases on Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, and Habermas. He is currently conducting research into theories of truth and theories of globalization. His most recent books, all published by Cambridge University Press, include Artistic Truth (2004), Social Philosophy after Adorno (2007), and Art in Public (2011).