FACULTY NEWS Distinguished Research Professor and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor Edward Halper has assumed the presidency of the International Plato Society. UGA will be hosting the Society’s Symposium XIII, “Plato’s Sophist” in July 2022. Halper also has been busy with multiple speaking engagements across the globe recently, including: the keynote address at the Conference on “Plato’s Philosophy in the Context of Interdisciplinary Research" in Tbilisi, Georgi (May 2018); the Rosamond Kent Sprague Lecture on “Aristotle's Metaphysics as a Ruling Science" at University of South Carolina (May 2019); a talk on “Aristotle’s Logic of Discovery," at the conference on "Aristotelian Logic in Medieval Jewish Cultures" in Jerusalem, Israel (June 2019); as well as talks at the Fédération internationale des associations d'études classiques in London, UK (July, 2019), and a conference on “Where Literature and Philosophy Meet: The Virtues in Xenophon’s Writings” in Jerusalem, Israel (November 2019). Associate Professor Piers Stephens was an invited delegate at the “Democratic Constitutional Design: The Future of Public Engagement” conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, in September 2018, hosted by the Office of the Prime Minister of Iceland and the Center for Democratic Constitutional Design, University of Iceland. In November 2018 Piers Stephens gave an invited paper, “Nature. Liberty and Ontology: Why Nature Experience Still Exists and Matters in the Anthropocene” at the “Liberty and Agency in the Anthropocene” symposium at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He also presented an updated version of the same paper at the 14th Annual International Conference on Philosophy, Athens Institute for Education and Research, Athens, Greece in May 2019. The paper in question is now published as a chapter in a new collection of essays, “Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet” edited by Christopher J. Orr, Kristen Kish and Jennings (Routledge). In addition to these ventures, Piers Stephens recently won a research fellowship from the Willson Center for Humanities in Arts to be released from teaching for a semester and complete his ongoing book project in spring 2021. Professor Chris Cuomo was awarded a grant by HP Corporation, with Jenna Jambeck (Engineering), to study women's roles in the informal plastic recycling sector in Haiti, which helps reduce plastic pollution in the Caribbean Sea. Associate Professor Sarah Wright co-organized an international Bled Philosophical Confererence in Bled, Slovenia in Summer 2019 and is organizing the 2021 conference as well. She is editing a special issue of the journal Acta Analytica to include papers presented at this conference. Instructor Marianna Koshkaryan gave a talk on “The Ideal of Happiness in Classical Greek Poetry, Plato and in the Contemporary World” at the 31st International Conference of Philosophy “The Possibility of Eudaimonia in the World Today” in Vouliagmeni, Greece in July 2019. Type of News/Audience: Announcement
