Core Scholarly Participants

The New Visions Steering Committee is pleased to announce the following core scholarly participants, based on a competitive selection process in late 2003. Core participants will pursue an intensive two-year project of collaborative research focusing on contemporary metaphors of biophysical and human nature across the science-humanities spectrum, exploring ways to harmonize these diverse visions of nature and their scientific and religious dimensions. For details on their October 2004 workshop click here, and to view text and streaming video of core participant interviews conducted during the workshop click here.

	John Hedley Brooke John Hedley Brooke is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford, where he is also a Fellow of Harris Manchester College. A former editor of The British Journal for the History of Science, he has been President of the British Society for the History of Science and of the Historical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1995, jointly with Geoffrey Cantor, he gave the Gifford Lectures at Glasgow University, subsequently published as Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (T & T Clark 1998; Oxford University Press 2000). He is also well known for his earlier book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge 1991).
	Willem Drees Willem B. Drees holds the chair in philosophy of religion and ethics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He earned an advanced degree in theoretical physics (Utrecht University, 1977) and doctorates in theology (Groningen, 1989) and philosophy (Amsterdam, 1994). He is the author of Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (Open Court, 1990), Religion, Science and Naturalism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Creation: From Nothing until Now (Routledge, 2003), and the editor or co-editor of Is Nature Ever Evil: Religion, Science and Value (Routledge, 2004), The Human Person in Science and Theology (T&T Clark, 2000), and various other publications. He serves as president of ESSSAT, the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology.
	George Ellis George Ellis obtained a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge in 1964 on topics in general relativity theory and cosmology. In his early career he co-authored the book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Dr Stephen Hawking. He returned to Cape Town in 1973 as Professor of Applied Mathematics and Head of Department. His recent scientific work has centred on cosmology on the one hand and on the nature of complex systems on the other; he has also been active in the science and religion debate. In 1999 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Cape Town, and was awarded the Star of South Africa Medal (Non-Military) by State President Nelson Mandela for services to the country.
	Martha Henderson Martha Henderson is a cultural geographer on the faculty of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She teaches in the Masters of Environmental Studies program and in undergraduate environmental sciences. Her research interests include cultural landscapes, ethnic studies, and food security issues. Her current work includes researching the cultural landscapes of wildland fire in the Aegean Basin, rural health and food security in southeast Oregon, and power and place in eastern Washington. Her work on Aegean wildfire is supported by a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship at the University of the Aegean, Lesvos Island, Greece, Spring 2004.
	Antje Jackelén Antje Jackelén is Associate Professor of systematic theology/religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science. She studied theology in Bethel and Tuebingen (Germany) and in Uppsala (Sweden). She earned her PhD (Dr.Theol.) from Lund University in 1999. Dr. Jackelén serves on the boards of major religion-and-science organizations and is a founding member of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR). Her publications include Time and Eternity: The Concept of Time in Church, Natural Sciences and Theology (Neukirchener, 2002) as well as numerous articles in theology and religion-and-science, published in various languages.
	Stephen Kellert Stephen R. Kellert is the Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Much of Professor Kellert’s work focuses on understanding the connection between human and natural systems with a particular interest in the value and conservation of nature and designing ways to harmonize the natural and human built environments. He has authored more than 100 publications, including The Good in Nature and Humanity: Connecting Science, Religion, and Spirituality with the Natural World (edited with T. Farnham, Island Press, 2002), and Kinship to Mastery: Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development (Island Press, 1997). Professor Kellert recently completed a book manuscript, Ordinary Nature: Understanding and Designing Connections Between the Natural and Human Built Environments.
	Barbara King Barbara J. King is Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Her research focuses on communication and cognition in primates as understood via dynamic-systems theory; her current project, on the ontogeny of gesture in gorillas, is described here. King’s recent publications include articles co-authored with Stuart Shanker in Anthropological Theory and Behavioral and Brain Sciences. As a Guggenheim Fellow, she completed a book about “the dynamic dance” of great ape social communication (forthcoming, Harvard University Press). Wishing to understand the ways in which specific aspects of the social lives of great apes and early hominids led to the development of the religious imagination, she has begun research for a new book.
	Fred Ledley Dr. Ledley's career has followed the maturation of genomics from basic science to clinical implementation. He is the Founder and Chairman of Mygenome, Inc., a start-up company focused on delivering the health benefits of genomics to consumers. He has been an Assistant Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Pediatrics at the Baylor College of Medicine. He has authored over 150 publications on basic genomic research as well as papers on clinical investigation and bioethics. Dr. Ledley trained in Pediatrics and Genetics at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and MIT, has an M.D. from Georgetown University, and a BS from the University of Maryland.
	David Livingstone David N. Livingstone is Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at the Queen’s University of Belfast. He has served as a visiting professor at several North American universities and as a Visiting Noted Scholar at the University of British Columbia. He has research interests in the history of geography, religion and scientific culture and is the author of several books including Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science (1987), Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders (1987), The Geographical Tradition (1992) and Putting Science in its Place (2003). He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
	Andrew Lustig Andrew Lustig, Ph.D., is Director of the Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics, cosponsored by Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. He is also Research Scholar in Religious Studies at Rice University and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Ethics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Lustig's current research focuses on how religious appeals to "nature" frame the discussion of various topics in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine. He is project director and co-P.I. of "Altering Nature: How Religious Traditions Assess the New Biotechnologies," a multi-year study funded by the Ford Foundation. Dr.Lustig has published widely in professional journals, and is co-author or editor of eight books in policy and medical ethics.
	Douglas Norton Doug Norton is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Villanova University. He earned his B.S. from Wake Forest University, his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, all in mathematics. His mathematical research is in the area of Dynamical Systems; his other interests include mathematical applications in the life sciences, the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, encouraging the participation of underrepresented groups in science and mathematics, and interactions of mathematics with the arts and humanities. This last area has led him full circle to consider implications of chaos theory and related topics in Dynamical Systems in theology and views of the universe. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Botswana during the 1996-97 academic year.
	Gregory Peterson Gregory R. Peterson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at South Dakota State University. Dr. Peterson’s primary area of research is in the religion and science dialogue, with special attention devoted to the biological and cognitive sciences. Author of over 29 articles on religion and science in books, encyclopedias, and journals, he has recently published the book Minding God: Theology and Cognitive Science (Fortress 2002). Dr. Peterson has spoken on religion and science issues nationally, is a review editor for the journal Zygon, and is a co-chair for the religion and science group for the American Academy of Religion.
	James Proctor James D. Proctor serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Proctor, who received his Ph.D. in geography from Berkeley in 1992, also holds degrees in environmental science and religious studies. Research interests concern attitudinal and theoretical dimensions of nature, science, and religion, and the relationship between religion, modernity, and authority. Dr. Proctor directed Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, a three-year series at UC Santa Barbara funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Dr. Proctor has published in a wide variety of academic journals, and is editor of several related books.
	Nicolaas Rupke Nicolaas Rupke is Professor of the History of Scienc at Göttingen University and Director of the Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. His areas of expertise are the late-modern earth and life sciences and his preferred approach is that of "scientific biography", having produced studies of such nineteenth-century men of science as William Buckland in The Great Chain of History (1983), on Richard Owen (1994), and most recently on Alexander von Humboldt, Appropriating Humboldt: Alexander von Humboldt in German Political History (submitted for publication). Currently he is working on "Eminent Lives in Twentieth-Century Science and Religion".
	Joan Silk Joan Silk is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a core member of the interdisciplinary Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture. Her major research interests focus on the evolution of social behavior in primates. Over the last 10 years, Silk and her collaborators have been studying the lives of wild female baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana and the Amboseli Basin of Kenya. This body of work illuminates the importance of social ties to individuals within primate groups, the importance of kinship in structuring social bonds, and the intimate link between competition, conflict, and cooperation. This work helps to define the links that connect humans to primate ancestors, and to illuminate critical differences that have emerged in the course of human evolution.
	Hans Thijssen Johannes (Hans) Thijssen is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Nijmegen and is Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Natural Philosophy. His research interests include the history of philosophy and science, medieval studies, and the history of universities. One of his current projects is a critical edition of John Buridan’s Quaestiones on the Physics. He is Founder and Consulting Editor of the journal Early Science and Medicine and of the book series Medieval and Early Modern Science (Brill Academic Publishers). He is Chairman of the programme “From Natural Philosophy to Science,” which is funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF).
	Robert Ulanowicz Robert E. Ulanowicz is Professor of theoretical ecology with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Solomons, Maryland. Educated as a chemical engineer, Dr. Ulanowicz's chief interest has been the quantification of the phenomena of growth and development as they transpire in ecosystems. Toward this end, he developed numerous algorithms for analyzing networks of ecosystem trophic exchanges and eventually sought a deeper understanding of the nature of causalities at work in living systems. His formulation of an "ecological metaphysic" provides a far more neutral background for theistic belief than heretofore had been possible under the conventional Newtonian worldview.