Selected Speaker Biographies (where provided) Please note speakers are arranged A-Z by first name. Aaron Brooks grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Liberty University, an M.Div. from Duke University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Florida State University. His primary area of research is in value theory and its relation to how we should live. In particular, he specializes on life’s meaning. He has been published in Unisinos Journal of Philosophy. He is currently an Instructor of Philosophy at Durham Technical Community College. Angel On Ki TING received her PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2013 and is currently a lecturer in philosophy at School of Continuing Education of Hong Kong Baptist University. She teaches applied ethics and introduction to philosophy. Her research interests include bioethics, meaning in/of life, moral psychology, ethics, comparative philosophy, early Confucianism and Zhuangzi. 1 Anton Heinrich Rennesland obtained his MA and BA Philosophy degrees from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines, where he is currently a faculty member of the Department of Philosophy. He published several journal articles and has forthcoming book chapters on his fields of interest: Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk, Comparative Philosophy, and the Anthropocene. Aribiah David Attoe is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Leadership ethics in Africa, University of Fort Hare, South Africa. He is a recipient of the Global Excellence Stature scholarship from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He also holds a Doctoral Degree from the University of Johannesburg, a Master’s degree in philosophy of mind and a Bachelor’s degree (Hons.) from the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He is also a member of the prestigious Conversational School of Philosophy. His major research areas of interest span across: African Philosophy, Neurophilosophy, Metaphysics and Ethics, and he has given various talks on areas related to his research areas at different international forums and conferences. 2 Benjamin Murphy was born in England in 1972 and studied philosophy and theology at Oxford, where his doctorate was supervised by Richard Swinburne. In 2000, he moved to Latin America and he is now settled in the Republic of Panama with his wife Maria del Rocío. He teaches at Florida State University’s branch campus. The main goal of his research is to cast light on the proper role of logic within religious thinking, taking into account recent work on logical pluralism. Bernice Brijan MA is a Ph.D. student based at Tilburg University and at the University of York. During her graduate studies in theology and religion she focused mainly on Early Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as on spiritual care. This background has profoundly shaped her interest in the study of ritual and transformative experiences with regard to loss and recovery. Her current research in the fields of philosophy of religion and philosophy of psychiatry is aimed at developing the notion of personal recovery in the context of psychiatric vulnerability with the help of the concept of existential feeling. 3 Bryony Pierce completed her PhD at the University of Bristol. Her doctoral thesis was on ‘The Role of Consciousness in Action’ and she has published papers on consciousness, philosophy of action, rationality, artificial intelligence and experimental philosophy. She is a former member of the European Science Foundation CNCC “CONTACT” research group, was an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Bristol until April 2018, and is a Founder Member of Experimental Philosophy Group UK, as well as being actively engaged in community philosophy. Carien Smith is a writer and academic, currently a resident writing fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa. In her creative work she mainly works in the genres of short fiction and theatre. In academic work her research focus is in philosophy and literature, specifically on climate change ethics, the apocalypse, absurdity, and value theory. 4 Charles Nkem Okolie was born on 5th October 1973 and hails from Mgbowo in Enugu State, Nigeria. He holds a B.Sc (Ed) in Philosophy- 1997, M.A -2002, LLB-2005, and Ph.D- 2008 in Philosophy. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu Alike Ebonyi State Nigeria. He has published widely in reputable journals and his research interest is on Political Philosophy, Law and recently on Ethics and meaning in life. He is married to Maureen and the marriage is blessed with 3 Children, Charles, Valentine and Mcanthony. Dr. Charles Repp is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Longwood University. He teaches and writes about meaning in life, applied ethics, ancient philosophy, and the philosophy of literature. He is past President of the Virginia Philosophical Association. 5 Christophe du Ray is a final-year PhD candidate at King’s College London. His main research interests lie in philosophy of religion, metaphysics and philosophy of science. He has been working on what he calls an 'evolutionary sceptical challenge to scientific realism' over the course of his time at King's. Drew Chastain teaches philosophy as a Visiting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans and has published a number of articles on spirituality and meaning in life. His work explores what it means to be spiritual but not religious and also how to better understand the subjective, experiential aspect of meaning in life. 6 Ema Sullivan-Bissett is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests lie primarily in the philosophy of mind and psychology, specifically belief and its connection to truth, self-deception, and delusion, as well as biological approaches to what are characteristically thought to be normative questions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. She is also interested in anti-natalism, pro-mortalism, and the connection between the two. Eri Mountbatten-O’Malley is a Graduate Teaching Assistant and final year PhD at Edge Hill University. Eri’s research interests are at the cross-roads between epistemology and ethics. In particular he is interested in conceptions of human nature, language, normativity, philosophy of psychology and notions of the common good. His PhD research is a conceptual analysis of human flourishing. He has spoken internationally on the relationship between education and wonder, as well as the problems related to reductionist accounts of human flourishing. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and an executive committee member of the British Postgraduate Philosophical Association (BPPA). 7 Fionn O’Donovan. I was born and educated in Southampton, and then moved to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford in 2012. In Oxford, I developed my interest in ethics and the meaning of life, and went on to complete a Masters in Philosophy at the University of Reading before moving back to Southampton to start a PhD on Aristotelian meta-ethical naturalism. I am primarily a moral philosopher, but I am also interested in epistemology, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy (especially Wittgenstein and Indian Buddhist philosophy). You can find out more on my personal website. Francesca Brencio is an Assistant Professor and Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Seville (Spain), Convener and Instructor at the Pheno-Lab, A Theoretical Laboratory on Philosophy and Mental Health, hosted by the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the University Hospital in Freiburg (Germany) and member of The Phenomenology and Mental Health Network at The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, Catherine’s College, University of Oxford (UK). 8 Heidi Cobham is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the phenomenology of being in love. Heidi previously studied BA and MA Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. Iddo Landau is a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is author of Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017) and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life (forthcoming). 9 Jag Williams is a MSc philosophy student at the University of Edinburgh with interests in the intersections of the philosophies of cognition, language, and mind and how these domains of philosophy describe various aspects of human embodiment, rationality, and religiosity. In particular, his research focuses on exploring the connection between embodiment and rationality through the theoretical lenses of the Phenomenological and American Pragmatist traditions in order to better articulate and develop the ways embodied and social practices play a fundamental role in shaping our experience as embodied, social, and rational creatures. Jairus Diesta Espiritu is Instructor at the Department of Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman. He recently finished his MA Philosophy from the same institution. His master’s thesis is entitled “Antiphilosophical Investigations: Badiou’s notion of Antiphilosophy and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.” Arguing against the reading of the French philosopher Alain Badiou, he maintained in his thesis that Wittgenstein’s posthumous Philosophical Investigations is antiphilosophical much like the earlier Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 10 Jin Xin is a doctoral candidate at Nanjing University (China), exchange student at Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada) in 2017, visiting scholar at University of Texas at Austin in 2018. He is focusing on the philosophy of mind, especially on contemporary free will problem. His dissertation is trying to deal with the luck objection to libertarianism. Jordi Fairhurst is a PhD candidate at the University of the Balearic Islands with a FPU grant from the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte del Gobierno de España (MINECO). His current project focuses on Wittgenstein's ethics, although his research interests also include various topics in meta- ethics and philosophy of language (and their intersection).