STAFF
CEPHAS staff are motivated by the shared desire to create a space for a renewal of philosophy and theology – as a vital and living tradition – in the U.K.
Prof George Corbett – Director
BA (Hons), M-Phil, MA, Ph.D (Cantab)
George is Professor of Theology at the School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Previously, he held positions as Junior Research Fellow, Trinity College, and affiliated lecturer , University of Cambridge. He received his BA (double first), MPhil (distinction), and PhD (AHRC-funded) from the University of Cambridge. He has also studied in Pisa (as an Erasmus-Socrates exchange scholar at La Scuola Normale Superiore), Rome (Institutum Pontificium Alterioris Latinitatis), and Montella (Vivarium Novum).
He teaches and researches in historical and systematic theology (with specialisms in medieval theology, Aquinas’s theology and its influence, and Catholic theology) and theology and the arts (with specialisms in Dante studies, sacred music, and theological aesthetics).
He is the author of Dante’s Christian Ethics: Purgatory and Its Moral Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), and is co-editor of Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, 3 vols (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015-17), an international collaboration by thirty-four scholars on a reappraisal of the whole poem. He has also published on Aquinas, sacred music, medieval theology, and the arts.
Sister Valery Walker, O.P.
Workshop Leader
Sr Valery is a Dominican Sister with the English Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena (Stone, U.K.). In the early 1970s, she was introduced by Fr Romuald Horn O.P. to a particular method of studying the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas.
Since then, she has run numerous S Thomas study days and weekends.
Sr Magdalene Eitenmiller, O.P.
Workshop Leader
Sr. Magdalene is a Dominican sister with the English Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena (Stone, U.K.), based in Cambridge. She received a Master’s degree in Theology (Ave Maria University, Florida), and the Licentiate in Sacred Theology in Thomistic Studies (Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.), and she is currently pursuing doctoral studies with the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome. She is the author of “On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 17.1 (2019):57-91 and “Grace as Participation according to St. Thomas Aquinas” New Blackfriars (2017): 689-708, among other publications
Sr. Magdalene teaches courses on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas online, and has developed a website called Thomisticstudies.org, as well as a Youtube channel, Facebook, and Instagram pages.
Fr Jean Gové
Keynote Speaker (Cephas 2024)
Fr Jean Gové’s research—in philosophy of mind and language—focuses on the relationship between thought, reference, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
A diocesan priest from the Archdiocese of Malta, he is currently completing his PhD in philosophy at the University of St Andrews, where he also studied for his masters (MLitt in Philosophy). He received his Bachelor of Sacred Theology from the University of Malta, and he has also studied, as a visiting researcher, at the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome) and at the Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, Paris).
He lectures at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and he has also regularly guest-lectured at the Department of AI, University of Malta.