Keynote Speakers
Associate Professor,
City University of
New York.
Barbara Gail Montero is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York (CUNY). Over the course of her career, she has received a number of national research awards, including two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research Fellowships, an NEH Summer Stipend, and an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Ryskamp Research Fellowship. Before reading philosophy, Professor Montero spent several years as a professional ballet dancer.
Professor Montero’s research focuses on two very different notions of body: body as the physical or material basis of the mind, and body as the moving, breathing, flesh and blood instrument we use when we run, walk, or dance. The first line of research questions whether physicalism is best thought of as the theory that everything, including consciousness, is ultimately accounted for by physics.
The second line of research is pursued in Professor Montero’s book, Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind (2016, Oxford University Press). This book investigates the nature of various mental processes such as awareness, rationality, thought and deliberation via the study of expert action and proprioception. She argues against the idea that when one has attained a very high level of skill (such as that of the professional athlete, musician, or dancer), action proceeds automatically and effortlessly.
PhD Student,
New York University.
Jenny Judge is a philosopher and musicologist interested in the resonances between musical experience and philosophy of mind. She holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Cambridge, and is currently studying for a second PhD in philosophy at NYU. Her dissertation explores the nature of temporal experience, in particular experiences of temporal structure, movement and repetition. Recent publications include ‘The surprising thing about musical surprise,’ which is currently online at Analysis. Jenny’s philosophical research is informed by her work as an active musician: she performs original music in venues around New York City, most recently in collaboration with jazz guitarist Ted Morcaldi. Jenny has also written non-fiction for The Guardian, Medium and Aeon, and she is currently the writer in residence at the PAN project, a piece by composer Marcos Balter for solo flute (performed by Macarthur fellow and Harvard professor Claire Chase), electronics and mass community participation premiering in New York in March 2018. Jenny writes fiction in her spare time.