Research Professor: Stephen Priest

Stephen Priest is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and a member of Hughes Hall at the University of Cambridge. He has been a Visiting Professor in universities in France, Germany, Japan, Macedonia, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Stephen is the author of The British Empiricists (Penguin, Routledge), Theories of the Mind (Penguin, Houghton Mifflin), Merleau-Ponty (Routledge), The Subject in Question (Routledge) and editor of Hegel’s Critique of Kant, (Oxford University Press), Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings (Routledge) and A Dictionary of Philosophy (ed. with Antony Flew) (Macmillan).

His work has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Russian and Spanish. His current research interests include the relations between science and spirituality and the existence and nature of consciousness. He lectures in metaphysics, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of history at the University of Oxford.

Fellow: Charles Taylor

Professor Charles Taylor was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2007 and the Kyoto Prize for Thought and Ethics in 2008. He is Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec. Professor Taylor was for many years a Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford where he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory from 1976 to 1981. He was also Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at McGill University where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Professor Taylor is a well-known critic of naturalism, which he defines as a family of theories that share the ambition to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This is reflected in his earliest monograph, The Explanation of Behaviour, and has been a central theme throughout his career. Professor Taylor has published numerous highly influential works in political philosophy where he is associated with the communitarian critique of liberalism. These include a number of reflections on the meaning and significance of modernity, such as his widely cited Sources of the Self. In recent years Professor Taylor has written extensively on the philosophy and sociology of religion, including his 2007 book, A Secular Age, described by the renowned sociologist Robert Bellah as ‘one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime.’

Research Fellow: Ralph Weir

Ralph Weir lectures in aesthetics at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He has also taught epistemology, ancient philosophy, and ancient Greek language, and has contributed to conferences and workshops in the UK, USA, and Europe. These include keynote talks for the ‘Science and Personal Action’ conference, MIT, 2015, and the First International Philosophical Dialogue, «EAST-WEST», Skopje, 2015. He holds a BPhil in Philosophy and an MSt in Ancient Philosophy from the University of Oxford and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Reading. His current research at the University of Cambridge concerns the philosophy of mind and is funded by an AHRC doctoral scholarship. In addition to his work for the Dalai Lama Centre, he is co-founder of the Humane Philosophy Project, a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Warsaw organising high profile conferences, seminars, and accredited philosophy courses.

Stipendiary Fellow : Jan Westerhoff

Jan Westerhoff is University Lecturer in Religious Ethics at the University of Oxford. Originally trained as a philosopher and orientialist, his research focuses on philosophical aspects of the religious traditions of ancient India. Much of his work concentrates on Buddhist thought (especially Madhyamaka) as preserved in Sanskrit and Tibetan sources, he also has a lively interest in Classical Indian philosophy.

Stipendiary Fellow : Connie Svob

Connie Svob received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Alberta. During the tenure of her graduate studies, she was also a Visiting Student at the University of Oxford. At present, Dr. Svob is a Visiting Researcher at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, as well as a postdoctoral researcher in their Department of Psychology. Dr. Svob’s doctoral work focused on the intergenerational transmission of history and social attitudes (i.e., xenophobia) in children whose parent’s lived through war. Her present research examines the ways people remember historical events, life transitions, dreams, and religious experiences, and investigates how such memories relate to the cultivation of empathy. Dr. Svob also holds a diploma in Spiritual Direction through the Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls, Canada, and teaches courses at St. Joseph’s College on the psychology of faith.

Stipendiary Fellow :Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode

Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode is in the final year of his PhD at the Institute of Philosophy University of Warsaw under the supervision of Professor Zofia Rosinska. Mikolaj is a tutor at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford teaching Ancient Philosophy. In 2011 he was awarded the Crescendum Est - Polonia Foundation scholarship to carry out his doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Roger Scruton at the University of Oxford. In 2013 Mikolaj co-founded the Humane Philosophy Project, an international collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Warsaw. Mikolaj’s research interests include the relation of the individual to her community, and the importance of moral emotions for understanding others. He is also interested in theories of the self in their broader cultural context, especially with respect to the importance of emotional integrity.

Stipendiary Fellow: Jonathan Price

Jonathan Price is PhD Fellow and Lecturer in legal philosophy at Leiden University’s Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Law. He also tutors in philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Oxford. With Professor Grahame Lock Jonathan set up the Leiden Oxford Exchange which gives graduate students of the University of Leiden the opportunity to carry out research in the philosophy of law at the University of Oxford. Jonathan is editor of Politics & Poetics, the 2015/2016 edition of which is being co-edited by the Dalai Lama Centre and will focus on the theme ‘Compassion and Community’. Jonathan is also editor of The Clarion Review at www.clarionreview.com.

Stipendiary Fellow: Benedikt Paul Göcke

Benedikt Paul Goecke is a Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and a Member of the Faculty of Theology at University of Oxford. He is also a Member of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.

Goecke is author of: A Theory of the Absolute (Macmillan, 2014), Alles in Gott? (Friedrich Pustet, 2012) and editor of After Physicalism (Nore Dame, 2012).

Stipendiary Fellow: George Fitz Herbert

George Fitz Herbert has a First in PPE from Exeter College, Oxford University, and postgraduate degrees from the Universities of London (SOAS), Harvard and Oxford. As a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford he has taught Tibetan (history, language, culture) in the Faculty of Oriental Studies for three years. Aside from his academic interests, religious and secular ethics and issues of human dignity in a globalized world are among his main concerns, and he would like to see the Dalai Lama Centre engaging with leadership programmes in Oxford and beyond on issues of personal integrity and corruption—issues that impede so many areas of public life across the world.

Stipendiary Fellow: Samuel Hughes

Samuel Hughes is a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he is pursuing research on ethics and the philosophy of emotion. From 2013-15 he was a Lord Crewe Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a B.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford; his BA thesis on Schiller’s theory of tragedy was awarded the Elizabeth Anscombe Prize for the best philosophy thesis in 2013, and has subsequently been accepted for publication in the British Journal of Aesthetics. Hughes is a peer reviewer for a number of leading academic journals, including the British Journal of Aesthetics and Mortality, an organizer of the Humane Philosophy Project and the Aesthetics Editor of Politics and Poetics. In the coming year, he will be teaching at the Universities of Skopje, Warsaw and Buckingham, and working as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo.

Stipendiary Fellow: Tenzin Dechen Rochard

Tenzin Dechen Rochard has a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy (University of London) and a PhD in Buddhist philosophy (University of Cambridge). She also completed a traditional 10-year study programme in Buddhist Philosophy at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (Dharamsala, India). Dechen translated and edited Geshe Sopa Rinpoche’s oral commentary on the Insight section of Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo (Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Vol. 5, forthcoming, Wisdom Publications). She has been teaching Buddhism, Philosophy, and meditation in the UK and abroad for several years, and is involved with inter-faith dialogue. She is currently working for The Dalai Lama Trust, translating a recently composed compendium of teachings by ancient Indian Buddhist masters of the Nalanda tradition, historically the source of all Tibetan Buddhist traditions.

Stipendiary Fellow: Jacob Burda

Jacob Burda received his secondary education in a humanistic ‘Gymnasium’ in Munich, Germany, where he completed the Graecum and the Latinum. He thereafter pursued a Bachelor of Science in History and Philosophy of Science at the University College in London before moving on to a two-year Masters in Philosophy as a departmental prize-fellow at New York University. Jacob began reading for the DPhil in Philosophy at Oxford in October 2014 where he is focusing on the relationship between the thought of Martin Heidegger and the German romantics.