Intercontinental Phenomenology Research Seminar
Mission
IPRS is designed to function as a platform for rigorous scholarship and dialogue in phenomenological research today. As the seminar title suggests, our goal is to bring together scholars from all corners of the globe whose diversely innovative approaches contribute to the field and expand it. We are especially committed to supporting junior scholars and scholars whose work in progress would benefit from the in-depth feedback (including Ph.D. students who are currently working on their theses). Each session has an extensive, 60-75 minutes discussion period built into it, which our speakers have found most productive. Over the course of our first year, our community has grown and many participants chose to return to sessions. Our continued conversations in IPRS have already led to substantial collaborative and mentoring work. As we grow, we remain open to new approaches and initiatives, so feel free to join the seminar.
Fall Quarter 2025 Program
About the Organizers
Andreea Smaranda Aldea is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. She earned her Ph.D. at Emory University. She has held research appointments as Postdoctoral Mellon Fellow in Philosophy at Dartmouth College, (2012-2014), Fulbright Finland Research Scholar (2019-2020), and Kone Foundation Finland Senior Research Scholar (2019-2021).
In her research, which has appeared in numerous articles and book chapters, she focuses on phenomenological methods, possibility constitution, conceivability, imagination, memory, the normativity and teleology of experiential life, critical philosophy, feminist philosophy, and phenomenological psychopathology.
She is the co-editor of a special issue of Continental Philosophy Review (with Amy Allen, 2016), entitled “The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault” and of a special issue of Husserl Studies (with Julia Jansen, 2020) entitled “Imagination in Husserlian Phenomenology: Variations and Modalities.” She has co-edited Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters (with David Carr and Sara Heinämaa, Routledge 2022) and Doing a Phenomenology of Political Life – Social Critique, Sense-Institution, and Political Imagination (with Délia Popa, Springer 2025). Together with Délia Popa and Christian Ferencz-Flatz, she is founding co-editor of the Springer book series New Directions in Phenomenology. She is currently finishing her book Limits, Possibilities, and Beyond – Transcendental Phenomenology as Radical Critique of the Present.
Sara Heinämaa is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä and Docent of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. In 2017–2022, she worked as Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland, leading a six-year research project on the phenomenology of normality, titled Marginalization and Experience. Prior to these posts she has worked as Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Gender Studies at the universities of Uppsala Sweden, Helsinki Finland, Oslo Norway and Turku Finland.
In her systematic work, Heinämaa investigates the structures of embodiment, intersubjectivity and temporality and theorizes the roles of emotions and norms in ethics and politics. She has published numerous articles on these topics, contributing to the development of phenomenology, existential philosophy, philosophy of mind and history of philosophy.
She is co-editor with Anthony J. Steinbock of a new book series, Husserlian Legacies: Themes for the 21s Century, which just released its first volume, Values of Love and Ethical Reflection (2025). Her other publications include Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity (with Hirvonen and Hartimo 2022), Phenomenology as Critique (with Aldea and Carr 2022), Phenomenology and the Transcendental (with Hartimo and Miettinen 2014), Birth, Death, and Femininity (with Schott et al. 2010) and Toward A Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (2003).
Délia Popa is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, where she teaches phenomenology, existentialism, contemporary French philosophy, as well as the philosophy of psychoanalysis, of literature, and of film. Between 2020 and 2023, she was part of a research team working on the project Structures of Bodily Interaction, studying the phenomenology of gestures from an interdisciplinary perspective. Aside from her position at Villanova University, she has also taught at Haverford College, Université Catholique de Louvain, and Université de Nice.
Her research aims at bringing together phenomenological investigation and social critique. She has published numerous studies on the phenomenology of imagination, with an interest in examining its methodological dimension from a social and political perspective. Her current research focuses on the problem of becoming a stranger, social exclusion, and transclass experiences, with a new project on a feminist phenomenology of the sexual difference.
She is founding co-editor of the Springer book series New Directions in Phenomenology with Andreea Smaranda Aldea and Christian Ferencz-Flatz. She is the author of Apparence et réalité. Phénoménologie et psychologie de l’imagination (Olms, 2012) and co-editor of La portée pratique de la phénoménologie. Normativité, critique sociale et psychopathologie (2014), Approches phénoménologiques de l’inconscient (2015), Describing the Unconscious. Phenomenological Perspectives on the Subject of Psychoanalysis (2020).
Past Programs
