Spring 2026 Online Conference: Roots, Exile, and Migration
Saturday April 18. 2026
Everyone registered for the in-person colloquy and the online conference is welcome to join us! With your registration for either, you will receive a zoom link to the conference.
To register, please go to the online conference registration.
Schedule:
9:00AM EDT Welcome
9:15AM-10:45AM EDT- Session One: Panels A & B
11AM-12:30PM EDT- Session Two: Panels A & B
Lunch break 12:30PM- 1:30PM EDT
1:30-2:30 PM EDT Keynote address
2:45PM-4:15 PM EDT- Session Three: Panel A & B
4:30- 5:45 PM EDT- Session Four: Panels A & B
5:45 PM EDT Closing remarks
Detailed Schedule
Welcome 9AM – 9:15AM
Benjamin P. Davis and AWS Board
A brief welcome and further ways to connect with the Society.
Session One 9:15AM- 10:45AM
Panel A: Spirituality
Moderator: Kathryn Lawson
Teresa Piechowiak, University of Warsaw, “Rootedness as Integration of the Whole Human Being”
Simon Francesco Di Rupo, University of Perugia, “Mysticism without Confession: Simone Weil’s Impersonal in a Post-Secular Key”
ZHU Yujin, “Phenomenological Exegesis of Plato: Weil and Plotinus at the Threshold of Christianity”
Panel B: Pedagogy
Moderator: Ryan Poll
Ehsan Momtahan, Yasouj University, “Simone Weil and Algebra”
Melina Garibovic, North Central College, “Simone Weil on Attention”
Cynthia R. Wallace, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, “Survival and Life: Reading Weil on Migration with The Book of Records”
Session Two 11AM- 12:30PM
Panel A: Politics
Moderator: Cristina Basili
Sarah Lorgan-Khanyile, Harvard University, “What the Left Hand Cannot Know: Divine Asymmetry and the Ontology of Care in Simone Weil’s Politics”
Rachel Matheson, University of Saskatchewan, “Madness as Resistance in Simone Weil’s “Are We Struggling for Justice?”
Maria de las Mercedes Lopez Mateo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, “On Spiritual Wounds and Reactionary Shortcuts: Uprootedness in the Rise of the Far Right”
Panel B: Literature and Art
Moderator: Inese Radzins
Daniel Stepke, Duquesne University, “Simone Weil and The Iliad”
Alexander Perelson, Hudson County Community College, “Simone Weil and Romantic Anti- Capitalism”
Xavier Artigas & Pau Matheu, independent scholar and filmmaker, “Reclaiming the Journal d’Espagne: Libertarian Communism from Zaragoza to London in Simone Weil”
Lunch Break: 12:30PM-1:30PM
1:30- 2:30: Keynote Address: Stephen West, Philosophize This podcast, “Simone Weil: The Courage Required for Growth”
Moderator: Benjamin P. Davis
Session Three 2:45PM-4:15PM
Panel A: Roots
Moderator: Inese Radzins
Karoline Ritter, Universität Greifswald, “Simone Weil’s Asceticism as a Response to Modern Forms of Déracinement”
Beatriz Nunes, Institut für Romanistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, “Texts as Roots: Déracinement and the Search for Grounding”
Alyssa Mendez, University of Chicago, ““No to the New Uprooting”: Vernacular Historiography and the Defense of Roots in the Agrafa Mountains”
Panel B: Ethical Actions
Moderator: Rachel Matheson
Peli Meir, Haifa University, “Simone Weil, Gillian Rose, and the Ethico-Aesthetics of Eating the Sun”
Bongrand Simon, ENS de Lyon, “Exile, Uprootedness, and Spiritual Dissidence in Simone Weil, José Bergamín, and Nicolas Berdiaev”
Julien Lagalle, Université de Caen-Normandie, “Exile as the Spatial Form of Affliction in Simone Weil”
Session Four: 4:30PM- 5:30PM
Panel A: Weil in Dialogue
Moderator: Cynthia Wallace
Elinore Darzi, Trinity University, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: The Ethical Commandment, Between Ethics and Aesthetics in Simone Weil and Adel Abdessemed”
Malwina A. Tkacz, Trnava University in Trnava & Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, “Crisis, Hope, and Exile in Simone Weil and Søren Kierkegaard”
Alejandra Novoa-Echaurren, Universidad de los Andes, “Anastasia Filippovna: mental illness as exile. Dialogue between Simone Weil and Fyodor Dostoyevsky”
Panel B: Platonism and Neo Platonism
Moderator: Kathryn Lawson
Sarah Janker, Western University of Ontario, “Manifestations of Social Justice in Plato’s Republic and Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots”
Alejandro Martinez Gallardo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, "Plotinus and Simone Weil on How Does the Soul Get Back Home?"
Closing remarks 5:30PM
Benjamin P. Davis and AWS Board
A very brief thank-you and further ways to connect with the Society.