Dr Nathan Lyons

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy

Email: nathan.lyons@nd.edu.au

• Biography

  Nathan Lyons is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2023-2026).

  He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and previously held positions as postdoctoral research fellow at Durham University and lecturer at Cambridge. He received his MPhil from the Australian Catholic University and his BA (Hons) from the University of Sydney.

  Nathan’s research focusses on medieval philosophy and theology, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of religion. His books include ​Signs in the Dust: A Theory of Natural Culture and Cultural Nature (Oxford University Press) and God and Being (Cambridge University Press).

  Nathan currently holds an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship​ for a project entitled Nature-Culture Continuities in Medieval Philosophy and Theology. This project will produce a major historical study of nature-culture theories in the medieval Latin tradition, considering themes such as cognition, semiotics, ethics, ecology, and metaphysics.

  • ORCID profile
  • Personal website

• Teaching areas

  • Medieval philosophy
  • Thomas Aquinas
  • Contemporary philosophy

• Research expertise and supervision

  • Medieval philosophy and theology
  • Thomas Aquinas
  • Philosophy of nature
  • Philosophy of religion
  • Science and religion

• Externally funded projects

  • Nature-Culture Continuities in Medieval Philosophy and Theology. 2023-27. Funded by a $416,213 Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award grant. Chief Investigator: Nathan Lyons.
  • Biocultural Evolution and Theological Anthropology. Funded by a $330,000 AUD ($221,081 USD) John Templeton Foundation grant. 2022-24. Chief Investigators: Michael Burdett (Nottingham), Nathan Lyons (UNDA), Megan Loumagne-Ulishney (Gannon), Victoria Lorrimar (UNDA).

• Books

  • The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (Elements Series in Christianity and the Natural Sciences). Cambridge University Press (under contract).
  • God and Being (Elements Series in Religion and Monotheism). Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • ​Signs in the Dust: A Theory of Natural Culture and Cultural Nature. Oxford University Press, 2019.

• Journal articles and proceedings

  • “Natural Philosophy in Early Modernity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment, ed. Alexander J. B. Hampton and Douglas Hedley (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 150–62, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108860666.011
  • “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the inflation of nature,” in New Directions in Theology and Science, ed.  Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson (Routledge, 2022), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003240334-4
  • “Theology, Philosophy, and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” special issue of Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences, 7.2 (2020), edited by Nathan Lyons and Andrew Davison, https://doi.org/10.1628/ptsc-2020-0014
  • “Creation and Darwin,” in The Oxford Handbook of Creation, ed.  Simon Oliver (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
  • “Written in White: A Reading of Kevin Hart’s ‘Colloquies,’” Literature and Theology 31, no. 2 (2017): 149–163, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw029

• Book reviews

  • Review of Kevin Hart, Poetry and Revelation: For a Phenomenology of Religious Poetry. Literature and Theology 33, no. 1 (2019): 113–15 (pub / preprint).
  • Review of Mark Sinclair, ed., Félix Ravaisson: Selected Essays. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 27, no. 1 (2018): 236–37