The Future of Meaning Conference

Dr. Andrew M. Davis is an American process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of the cosmos. He is Research and Academic Director for the Center for Process Studies, where he researches, writes, teaches, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought. An advocate of metaphysics and meaning in a hospitable universe, he approaches philosophy as the endeavor to systematically think through what reality must be like—because we are a part of it. He is author, editor, and co-editor of nearly a dozen books, including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (2020); Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy (2022); Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology (2023); and Whitehead and Teilhard: From Organism to Omega (2025). His forthcoming book is a comprehensive yet conversational introduction to Alfred North Whitehead titled Whitehead’s Universe: A Prismatic Introduction. Follow his work at andrewmdavis.info.

Ilia Delio, OSF is a Systematic-Constructive theologian who works at the interface of science, religion and culture. She holds a doctorate in Pharmacology from Rutgers University, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and a doctorate in Historical Theology from Fordham University. She is the author of twenty-six books including The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole, The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science and the Human Journey which won the 2022 Gold Nautilus Book Award, and Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize. She is founder and Executive Director of the World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture.

John Haught, PhD is Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University, where he taught in the Department of Theology from 1970 to 2005 and served as chair from 1990 to 1995. His field is systematic theology, with a particular interest in the questions that arise where science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion meet. He is the author of 24 books, among them God After Einstein: What’s Really Going on in the Universe? (Yale University Press, 2022), The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Orbis, 2021), and The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe (Yale University Press, 2017). His writing emphasizes hope, depth, and the unfinished character of the universe, offering a vision that resists both reductionist materialism and anti-scientific retreat. Haught lectures internationally and has received the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and an honorary doctorate from Louvain University in Belgium.

Robert Nicastro is a theologian and author whose work explores the intersection of religion, science, and technology. Drawing on evolutionary theology and the philosophy of emergence, he investigates how technological development is reshaping human identity, planetary consciousness, and the future of religious meaning. His work seeks to articulate a more integrated vision of humanity’s place within an evolving cosmos and to cultivate forms of meaning capable of addressing the fragmentation of modern life. His doctoral dissertation, The Future as Sole Support: Metaphysics, Hyperphysics, and the Theology of Teilhard de Chardin, offers a reinterpretation of Teilhard’s cosmic vision as a compelling metaphysical framework for addressing the complex challenges of the twenty-first century.

Sheri D. Kling, PhD is a theologian, songwriter, and spiritual teacher who draws from wisdom and mystical traditions, relational worldviews, depth psychology, and the intersection of spirituality and science to help people find meaning, belonging, and transformation. She serves as director of Process & Faith with the Center for Process Studies, interim minister of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bradenton, Florida, and teaches regularly for the Haden Institute and Claremont School of Theology, from which she earned her doctorate. She is the author of A Process Spirituality: Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation, and editor of Renewing Faith: Reigniting Faith and Ministry through Process and Open & Relational Theologies. As a public speaker, Sheri delivers dynamic presentations to groups, and offers courses, concerts, and spiritual retreats. She can be found online at sherikling.com, at sherikling.substack.com and also on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@drsherikling

Stephen Blackwood is the founding president of Ralston College, an institution devoted to liberal education, freedom of thought, and the pursuit of truth within the Western intellectual tradition. His work as an educator and institution-builder centers on recovering forms of learning that integrate intellectual seriousness, moral formation, and cultural inheritance. Blackwood studied classics as an undergraduate, and received an MA (Classics) from Dalhousie and a Phd (Religion) from Emory University. He has held visiting positions at Harvard University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cambridge. His primary academic focus has been on the nature of the human person, specifically as it comes to be understood in ancient and medieval times, and on the evolution of the ideals, institutions, and cultural forms that enable human beings to flourish. His book on the Roman poet-philosopher-statesman, Boethius, was published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Victoria Trumbull is a philosopher, researcher, and writer whose work concerns the nature of the human mind and the relationship between time, memory, and the soul. She received her DPhil in 2025 and her MPhil with distinction in 2021, both from the University of Oxford, where her doctoral thesis was examined by Rowan Williams, and holds a BA in Philosophy from Columbia University. Her work bridges philosophical psychology, metaphysics, and the history of philosophical thought, and it presses against the reductive materialism that governs most contemporary accounts of mind. She argues that memory is not stored in the brain but unfolds in time, a claim that reopens questions of interiority, selfhood, and soul which cognitive science has largely set aside. Her first book, On the Memory of the Soul: Augustine and Bergson’s Metaphysics, is published by Bloomsbury Philosophy. She writes and speaks for general as well as scholarly audiences on memory, consciousness, and the conceptual and existential stakes of artificial intelligence.