Workshop
'Female Philosophers, Male Feminists: Renegotiating Gender and Learning in Early Modern Europe'
25 November 2026, 9.45am–5.00pm
Maison Française d’Oxford
Convened by Mogens Laerke (CNRS/NOTCOM)
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. The event brings together four major ongoing projects wholly 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/ERC 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.
9h45-10h00 Welcome
10h00-10h30 Catherine Goldstein (CNRS, Paris), “An Arithmetic for Women? Marie Crous’s Ambiguous originality in Early-Modern Mathematics"
10h30-11h00 Helena Taylor (CultPhil, University of Exeter), “Antoinette Salvan de Saliez and Claude-Charles de Vertron: Community, Activism, Utopia?”
Chair: Kate Tunstall (Worchester College, Oxford)
11h00-11h30 Coffee
11h30-12h00 Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (WHENCE, University of Copenhagen), "Splendor of the Female Sex’, ‘Minerva of the North’ or ‘Another Aspasia’: Nordic Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period and Their European Reception" [online]
12h00-12h30 Una Faller (NOTCOM, ENS de Lyon), “Green Sickness and Early Modern Women: An overview of primary sources and what they can (and cannot) tell us about the disease of virgins”
Chair: Sally Mullis (Magdalen College, Oxford)
12h30-13h30 Lunch
13h30-14h00 Bodil Hvass Kjems (WHENCE, University of Copenhagen), “Benevolent Gatekeepers, Non-Ventriloquists, Affective Mentors: How Two Male Proto Feminists Endorsed Learning as a Vocation for Women in the Nordic Enlightenment”
14h00-14h30 Ruth Boeker (BMoral, University College Dublin), “Female Spaces for Learning and Moral Improvement in Eighteenth-century Britain”
Chair: Raphaele Garrod (Magdalen College, Oxford)
14h30-15h00 Break
15h00-15h30 Floris Verhaart (CultPhil, University of Exeter), "Work in Progress, for Private Use: Pieter de la Rue's Nederlands Geleerd Vrouwentimmer"
15h30-16h00 Margherita Giordano (BMoral, University College Dublin), “Women's Learning in The Ladies Library and Early Enlightenment Public Debates”
Chair: Caroline Warman (Jesus College, Oxford)
16h00-16h15 Break
16h15-16h45 Sarah Hutton (York University), “Giuseppa Barbapiccola: Philosopher or 'Mere Translator'?”
Chair: Susan James (Birkbeck College/King’s College London)
16h45-17h00 Conclusions
