Female Philosophers, Male Feminists: Renegotiating Gender and Learning in Early Modern Europe

This one-day interdisciplinary workshop will include papers dedicated to the work of women thinkers in the early modern period across several subdisciplines, including aesthetics, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, and medical science. Confirmed speakers include Sarah Hutton (York), Susan James (Birkbeck/King’s College London), Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (Copenhagen), Helena Taylor (Exeter), Ruth Boeker (Dublin), Bodil Hvass Kjems (Copenhagen), Floris Verhaart (Exeter), Una Faller (Lyon), and Mogens Lærke (Lyon/Oxford). Full programme forthcoming.

The event brings together four major ongoing projects entirely or partly devoted to the place of women thinkers in early modern Europe, including the ERC Advanced project Women in the Nordic Enlightenment (WHENCE), coordinated by Sabrina Ebbersmeyer at the University of Copenhagen in 2024-2028, the ERC Consolidator project New Histories of British Moral Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (BMoral), coordinated by Ruth Boeker at University College Dublin in 2025-2030, the UKRI project Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (CultPhil), coordinated by Helena Taylor at the University of Exeter in 2023-2028, and the ERC Advanced project The Common Notion: Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century (NOTCOM), coordinated by Mogens Lærke at the CNRS, Lyon (IHRIM) and Oxford (MFO), in 2023-2027.