Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience

Online Conference 2026: Otherness

November 14–15 & 21–22, 2026 · Held online · Multiple parallel session tracks

About the Conference

This conference explores Otherness — the way another person, another culture, or even an unfamiliar part of ourselves can appear within experience as genuinely not-us, while still remaining part of what we can know and relate to. Drawing on Husserl’s account of the “alter ego” and later phenomenological work on foreignness (Fremdheit), the conference brings together scholars working across phenomenology, theology, ethics, and continental philosophy to examine how Otherness shows up: in our encounters with other people, in history and culture, and within our own inner lives.

Sessions address Otherness in its phenomenological, ethical, political, cultural, and theological dimensions, with contributions engaging Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Waldenfels, and other major voices in the tradition.

Read the full description here »

Keynote Speakers

Four keynote talks, one per conference day.

Day 1

Michael Barber

The Question of the Ideology of Religious Experience and the Other: Essence, Social Science, and Verstehen

Michael Barber received his PhD from Yale University in 1985 and is currently emeritus professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University. He has authored eight books, most recently Resilience and Responsiveness: Alfred Schutz’s Finite Provinces of Meaning (Springer 2024). He has served as editor of Schutzian Research since 2009 and has held leadership positions in several phenomenological organizations, including SoPheRE.

Day 2

Michael Staudigl

University of Vienna

Barbarians, Cannibals, Terrorists: A Tropological Phenomenology of Otherness

Michael Staudigl (*1971), Docent, Dr. habil., is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy, associated Researcher at the Research Center for Religion and Transformation at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at University of Vienna, Austria. Granted a variety of research fellowships, he worked in Freiburg, Prague, Louvain-la-Neuve and New York. From 2000–2002 he was a scientific assistant at the psycho-traumatological ambulance ESRA, Vienna; from 2003–2010 Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna; from 2003–2006 he held an APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From 2007 onwards he directed several research grants funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Funds), most recently the bilateral project “The Return of Religion as a Challenge for Thought” (FWF I 2785 — with B. Klun, Slovenia) & the stand-alone project “Secularism and its Discontents: Toward a Phenomenology of Religious Violence.”

Day 3

Joseph Rivera

Dublin City University

Where to Experience the Other: A Critical Reading of Michel Henry

Joseph Rivera is a tenured professor of philosophy of religion at Dublin City University. He is the author of three monographs, most recently Phenomenology and the Horizon of Experience (Routledge, 2022), and the editor of a collection of essays on the theological turn in phenomenology as well as several special issues in journals. Research on another monograph is underway, on worldhood and worldmaking.

Day 4

Peter Costello

Marked by the Other: A Reading of Husserl and Genesis

Peter Costello is Professor of Philosophy at Providence College. He is the author of Layers in Husserl’s Phenomenology: On Meaning and Intersubjectivity (University of Toronto Press) and co-editor of Phenomenology and the Arts (Bloomsbury). His interests include hermeneutical approaches to Scripture and religious practice.

Plenary Speakers

Day 1

Felix Ó Murchadha

Desire, Estrangement and Identity: Eschatology and Fallenness

Felix Ó Murchadha is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Galway, a Fulbright Scholar, and currently President of the Irish Philosophical Society. His most recent monograph is The Fidelity of Reason: A Phenomenological Metaphysics of Self, Nature and Divinity (Springer, 2025).

Day 2

Naomi Janowitz

Fracturing Selves and Multiplying Others

Naomi Janowitz is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at the University of California–Davis. Her books include The Poetics of Ascent, Magic in the Roman World, and most recently Acts of Interpretation: Ancient Religious Semiotic Ideologies and Their Modern Echoes. She serves on the editorial board of The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Day 3

Cezary Woźniak

Making Otherness into Non-Otherness: Dialectics and Phenomenology of Otherness

Cezary Woźniak is Associate Professor in the Institute of Culture at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His work spans phenomenology, Buddhist studies, and hermeneutics; recent books include Spectrum of Immanence (2025).

Full Program

The full schedule is posted: all four days, every session, room and chair, with a filter so you can follow a single track. All sessions will be recorded.

View the Program & Schedule →

Membership & Registration

Conference registration requires current SoPheRE membership. If you’re not yet a member, join first — your membership unlocks the registration link below.

	Early Bird (through Sept 30)	After Sept 30 (through Nov 5)
Students / general public	$35	$55
Professionals	$55	$93
Emeriti	$35	$55

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