Mary Baine Campbell (Ph.D Boston University) is a Professor Emerita of English at Brandeis University, where she has taught medieval and early modern literature and creative writing for many years. Her scholarship focuses on early modern European literature, travel writing, and the scientific imagination, with an emphasis on the developments that have shaped perceptions of the natural world and distant lands during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods.
Campbell is the author of several notable works that explore how literature and science were intertwined in the formation of early modern thought. In Wonder & Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (1999), Campbell explores how wonder and imagination played a crucial role in shaping scientific thought and discovery in the early modern period. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600, analyzes how European travel writing from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance shaped perceptions and understandings of foreign lands and peoples.
In addition to her academic work, Campbell is an accomplished poet, with several published collections, including The World, the Flesh, and Angels—winner of the 1989 Barnard New Women Poets Prize—and Trouble. Her dual contributions as a scholar and poet highlight her unique awareness of the ways imagination and wonder continue to shape the way we understand the world today.
As of January 2026, J. Matthew Ashley (Ph.D. UChicago Divinity) is the Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA. His most recent book, Renewing Theology: Ignatian Spirituality and Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis (2022), considers how the understanding of Ignatian spirituality influenced the writings and work of three Jesuits: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis.
For his conference keynote, Dr. Ashley returns home to Notre Dame, where he is Emeritus Professor of Theology after serving 36 years as a professor and many years in key departmental roles like Director of Graduate Studies and Department Chair. Additionally, Dr. Ashley has taught for and advised all History and Philosophy of Science (Theology Track) Ph.D. students since the track’s inception.
Professor Ashley loves the outdoors and is committed to responding to Pope Francis’s call for integral ecology. His teaching and publishing record spans many science and theology topics, including eco-theology, evolutionary theological anthropology, original sin, science-theology method and history, providence and chance in Darwinian evolution, and the theology of Teilhard de Chardin.
Alan J. Rocke (P.h.D University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a historian of science, specializing in the history of chemistry and the physical sciences. He is a professor emeritus at Case Western Reserve University, where he has taught for many years. His research focuses on the development of chemical theory in the 19th- and 20th-century with a strong interest in the historical, intellectual, and social communities that shaped modern chemistry.
Rocke is the author of numerous articles and books. His latest book, Image and Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination (2010), examines the development of chemical theory in the 19th century, focusing on key figures like August Kekulé and Hermann Kopp. Rocke explores how the imaginative approaches used by these scientists helped shape their understanding of modern chemistry, bridging the gap between abstract scientific ideas and empirical reality.
Rocke has received numerous awards for his contributions to the history of science, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) HIST Award, and Case Western Reserve University’s Distinguished University Professor award.
Michael T. Stuart (Ph.D. IHPST University of Toronto) is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of York, specializing in the philosophy of science. His research explores the nature of scientific imagination, creativity, and thought experiments, particularly how these cognitive tools contribute to scientific discovery and understanding. Stuart has published extensively on the epistemic roles of imagination in both historical and contemporary scientific practices.
Stuart is currently working on a book about scientific imagination and understanding. And he is about to begin a project on the epistemic and ethical consequences of artificial intelligence in science, including the ways that AI might model, supplement, complement, or replace imagination in science, and the ways that AI might be said to instantiate scientific understanding.