Attention and Flourishing Conference

2026 Attention and Flourishing Conference


Date

Thursday, June 11 -
Saturday, June 13, 2026


Location

University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain


Call for Proposals

Please submit your form by January 9, 2026.

Bringing together artists, scholars, psychotherapists, and practitioners from around the world, the 2026 Attention and Flourishing Conference at the University of Navarra seeks to examine the undertheorized relationship between the virtue of attention, mental health, and the flourishing of individuals and communities. Hosted in the University’s beautiful Museum, the Conference is intent on exploring the modes of attention at play in artistic practices and the spaces dedicated to them, and how such approaches can foster richer notions of mental health, wellbeing, and the life well-lived.

Plenary Speakers:

D. Graham Burnett
D. Graham Burnett
Princeton University
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D. Graham Burnett

D. Graham Burnett

Princeton University

D. Graham Burnett is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science at PrincetonUniversity and co-editor of Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses (ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2023) as well as Twelve Theses on Attention (Princeton University Press, 2022), amanifesto of the “Friends of Attention” coalition — creators of the non-profit Strother School of RadicalAttention in Brooklyn, which Burnett directs. He co-curated the “Practices of Attention” program at the33rd São Paulo Biennial, and is associated with the speculative collective ESTAR(SER). In 2023 he wasa visiting artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland. Burnett writes widely on technology,culture, and media. www.dgrahamburnett.net

Clare Carlisle
Clare Carlisle
King's College London
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Clare Carlisle

Clare Carlisle

King's College London

Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, where she has taught since 2011 following a lectureship at the University of Liverpool. She studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD, 1995–2002).Professor Carlisle is the author of eight books, including acclaimed philosophical biographies of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot, and she is the editor of George Eliot’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics. In 2024, she delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews. She currently serves as President of the British Society for Philosophy of Religion.

Adam Green
Adam Green
Georgetown University
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Adam Green

Adam Green

Georgetown University

Adam Green is a Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University. His maininterest is in human creative intelligence and especially in understanding how neural processes constitute our best ideas.Adam’s work includes research into endogenous neural mechanisms and exogenous neurostimulation that support creative relational reasoning, as well as research on the neuroscience of teaching and learning in real-world educational contexts. He is a founder andformerpresident (2019-2021) of, and Editor-In-Chief atCreativity Research Journal. Adam received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Dartmouth and did his post-doctoral training at Yale.

Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney
Boston College
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Richard Kearney

Richard Kearney

Boston College

Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and formerly served as Professor at University College Dublin, the Sorbonne, and the University of Nice.

He is the author of 27 books of European philosophy and literature (including three novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited 23 more. His books have been translated into 21 languages. He has received graduate degrees from McGill University, The National University of Ireland, and The University of Paris, as well as several honorary degrees.

He was formerly a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. He is currently a member of the Royal Irish Academy and received the Research Ireland Medal for distinguished international scholarship in 2025.

As a public intellectual he presented numerous series on culture and philosophy for Irish and British radio and television, and broadcast extensively on the European and international media (France Culture, AƵ, CƵ, NPR).

He is currently the international director of the

Conference Committee:

Matthew Clemente
Matthew Clemente
Boston College
Conference Chair
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Matthew Clemente

Matthew Clemente

Boston College

Conference Chair

Matthew Clemente is the Director of Research & Curriculum atCenter for Psychological Humanities & Ethicsand anAssistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Formative Education at Boston College. He is the Coeditor in Chief of theJournal for ContinentalPhilosophy of Religionand the Codirector of theGuestbook Project, a 501c3 non-profit. He is the Series Editor of two book series withRoutledge/Taylor & Francis and has authored or edited over a dozen books.

Nieves Acedo
Nieves Acedo
University of Navarra
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Nieves Acedo

Nieves Acedo

University of Navarra

Nieves Acedo is a research fellow in the "Vínculos, creatividad y cultura" (Bonds, Creativity, and Culture) group of the Institute for Culture and Society, where she serves as the principal researcher for the "Models for Art Spectatorship" project. She is also the Director of the Master's Degree in Curatorial Studies at the Museo Universidad de Navarra and a Lecturer in Art Theory at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. An author of more than twenty pieces (books, book chapters, and articles) on modern art theory, she holds a degree in Geography and History from Complutense University, a degree in Philosophy from the University of Navarra, and a PhD in Art History from San Pablo CEU University.

Jerónimo Ayesta
Jerónimo Ayesta
Boston College
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Jerónimo Ayesta

Jerónimo Ayesta

Boston College

More information coming soon!

Inés Olza
Inés Olza
University of Navarra
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Inés Olza

Inés Olza

University of Navarra

Inés Olza is a Senior Researcher in Language and Cognition at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, where she serves as Principal Investigator of the Bonds, Creativity and Culture group, and as director of the Multimodal Pragmatics Lab (MuPra Lab), which focuses on the dynamics of human interaction and mediation. She also coordinates the national network CoCoMInt (“Conflict Communication and Mediation in Interaction”), which brings together 11 research teams from 10 Spanish universities. She is a member of Red Hen Lab, a distributed laboratory for research on multimodal communication, the Pamplona node of PRESEEA, and the Iberus Action Cluster 'Cognition in Action' (ICON). Her research focuses on figurative language, gesture, phraseology, and interactional dynamics from the perspectives of Pragmatics, Cognitive Linguistics, and Multimodality.

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
University of Navarra
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Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro

University of Navarra

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro is Artistic Director of the Museo Universidad de Navarra in Spain. He was Director and Chief Curator of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros from 2008–2018, and is currently Senior Advisor.He was Curator of the 33rdSão Paulo Bienal in 2018 and curator of the Brazilian pavilion at the 58thVenice Biennale in 2019. From 2002–2008 he was Curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. In 2007 he was Chief Curator of the 6thMercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil.He holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex, and an MA in Art History and Latin American Studies from the University of Aberdeen.From 2000-2002 he was Director of Visual Arts at The Americas Society in New York.Prior to that he was Exhibitions and Programs Coordinator at the Casa de América in Madrid.From 1993 to 1998 he was Founding Curator of the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art.He has published and lectured widely on modern and contemporary art from Latin America. He is a member of the collectiveESTAR(SER), the Esthetic Society for Transcendental & Applied Realization.

Conference Organizers:

Boston College Logo

Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics

University of Navarre Logo

Institute for Culture and Society

University of Navarre Logo

Museum University of Navarre

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