25 November 2026 - 25 November 2026
3:00PM - 4:30PM
DRMC/Nine DTP Hub Boardroom, 1st Floor, Arthur Holmes Building, left of The Calman Learning Centre, up the stairs, turn left. Door signed ‘DRMC’ and ‘Nine DTP’.
Free
DRMC are pleased to announce that Professor Andrea Hurst, Professor in Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa will be visiting Durham this month and delivering a seminar on the topic of the philosophy of complexity.
Professor Andrea Hurst, Professor in Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa will be giving the following seminar:
Seminar Title: A Philosophy of Complexity
Abstract: What does it mean to take complexity seriously, and how might it change the way we think and live? This presentation explores a philosophy of complexity through six familiar branches of philosophy: ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and logic. It asks how bringing complexity into these domains changes questions, unsettles boundaries and reveals connections. The discussion then turns to practice: how might philosophical insights become useful habits of thought in academic work and everyday life? Heuristics, or provisional guides for thinking and acting, provide a way into this question. There are as many heuristics as there are philosophers. The presentation zooms in on one particularly instructive heuristic, Jacques Derrida’s “plural logic of the aporia”, using it to examine the apparently simple claim that inclusivity is a core institutional value. It considers the assumptions this commitment carries, and the difficulties that emerge when we try to honour it. This example opens a wider conversation about working with oppositions and exercising judgement in a world that continues to surprise us.
Biography: Andrea holds a PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University, Philadelphia, USA, 2006. This research was focused on bringing complexity-thinking in continental philosophy into contact with psychoanalytic theory, leading to the publication of a book entitled Derrida vis-á-vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). She has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters examining the interfaces between complexity-thinking, psychoanalytic theory (particularly a Lacanian model of subjectivity), and philosophy as a way of life in its many dimensions. She currently holds a South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa and is engaged in a research programme that fuses philosophical inquiry with practice-based knowing in the various arts.
All PGR/PGT students and DU staff welcome!
Click Here to register your interest in attending this event
