Wednesday September 11

Keynote Talk: The experience of well-being and disruption: Directions for nursing from lifeworld philosophy

Kathleen Galvin is a Professor of Nursing Practice in the School of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Brighton. Her experiences and observations in clinical practice as a nurse heightened her awareness of the increasingly reductionist nature of healthcare and the ethical imperative to fully understand the depth and nuances of patients' experiences of suffering and illness. She realized that effective nursing practice often stems not from technical knowledge alone but from a deeper, more intuitive understanding. This insight sparked her interest in exploring what this "deeper" understanding entails, leading her to engage in discussions with colleagues about existential issues and phenomenology. This journey introduced her to the work of the human science community and lifeworld philosophy. Kathleen has since been developing research focused on the meaning of well-being and its absence, and how these concepts can inform and guide nursing practice.

Wednesday September 11

Keynote Talk: Consulting the Oracle of Dodona. Anxieties about health and childbearing

Konstantinos L. Zachos, who holds an MA and PhD from Boston University, is an emeritus curator of Antiquities with the Greek Ministry of Culture. During his time in Boston, he attended seminars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, and the Museum of Fine Arts. He furthered his education as a visiting researcher at the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte of the University of Heidelberg under Professor Harald Hauptmann. Zachos served as an archaeologist with the Ministry of Culture in various Ephorates of Antiquities, culminating his career as the Ephor of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina until his retirement in 1987.

Throughout his career, he organized and conducted numerous rescue excavations, most notably directing the systematic excavation of the cave of Zas on the island of Naxos. He also led the project to enhance the sanctuary of Dodona and restore its theater. Zachos dedicated much of his scientific and administrative efforts to transforming the archaeological site of Nicopolis into an exemplary Archaeological Park, involving extensive excavations, conservation and restoration of monuments, and landscape development. In 2023, he began directing systematic excavations in the Agora of Nicopolis. For his significant contributions to Nicopolis, he was honored by the Academy of Athens and received the Europa Nostra award for exemplary promotion of the site.

Zachos has organized international archaeological conferences and presented papers at numerous Greek and international conferences. His publications cover topics in Aegean prehistory and the archaeology of Epirus. He has overseen various exhibitions at the Museum of Ioannina, established three Archaeological Museums in Leukas, Nicopolis, and Arta, and renovated and re-exhibited the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina. As a visiting professor, he taught at the University of Ioannina and lectured at universities and major museums in Europe, the United States, and South Africa.

In 2002, Zachos was elected Assistant Professor of prehistoric archaeology at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, a position he declined to remain at the Archaeological Service. He is a fellow of the Getty Research Institute, a member of the Athens Archaeological Society, the Society for Epirotic Studies in Ioannina, and a corresponding member of the American Institute of Archaeology.

Thursday September 12

Keynote Talk: BIOETHICS; Eternal Challenges

Geroulanos Stefanos, born in Athens in 1940, studied Medicine in Zurich, Vienna, and Paris from 1958 to 1965. He began his career at the University Hospital Zurich in 1966, completing his Doctoral Thesis in 1969 and his Associate Professorship Thesis in 1979. In 1979, he became Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the University Hospital Zurich, and in 1987, he was appointed Professor of Surgery, a position he still holds. In 1993, he returned to Greece to serve as Chief of Staff and Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, where 1800-2000 open-heart operations were performed annually.

In 1997, Stefanos was elected Professor of History of Medicine at the University of Ioannina, where he founded the first major Museum of History of Medicine, featuring 14 showrooms with 10,000 items on display. From 2005 to 2016, he served as President of the International Hippocratic Foundation in Kos, where he established the Hippocratic Botanical Garden, a Museum on Hippocratic Medicine, a Hippocratic Cabinet, and a Hippocratic Pharmacy. He also served as President of the Citizens Movement for an Open Society in Greece from 2012 to 2015. In 2016, he was elected President of the International Central Committee of the International Hippocratic Foundation in Kos.

Stefanos has authored 27 books, with one translated into eight languages, one into five, one into four, and several into two. He has edited 20 books, contributed 62 chapters to 45 different books, published over 400 papers, and delivered more than 1000 lectures worldwide. He is a founding member of several scientific and musical societies and belongs to 42 medical associations, having served as President of thirteen. In 2011, he received the Cavafy Prize from the Egyptian and Greek governments for his groundbreaking research on Cavafy, documented in his book "C.P. Cavafy; Historia Arcana" (published in German, Greek, and English).

Friday September 13

Keynote Talk: Autonomy, Heteronomy, Vulnerability Three key concepts of moral philosophy and their function within the field of nursing ethics

Golfo Maggini is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ioannina, and has been the Department Chair from 2019 to 2024. She also holds the position of Affiliated Professor (Professor “extra numerum”) at the Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw, and serves as adjunct faculty and teaching unit coordinator for the “Studies in European Civilization” program at the Hellenic Open University. Maggini conducted her doctoral research on Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology at the University de Paris XII-Val de Marne (1994-1997), where she was a research assistant (allocataire de recherche), and later pursued postdoctoral research at the State University of New York Stony Brook (1997-1998) and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1998-1999).

Before her appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Ioannina in 2004, she taught history of philosophy, ethics, and applied ethics at the American College of Greece and the University of Patras. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and volumes, both in Greek and international journals, and has authored several philosophical monographs, including "Toward a Hermeneutics of the Technological World: From Heidegger to Contemporary Technoscience" (2010) and "Kinēsis, Bios, Kairos, Technē, Polis: Phenomenological Approaches" (2017), exploring thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jan Patočka, and Michel Henry.

For the past five years, she has led interdisciplinary philosophical research as Head of the Philosophy Research Laboratory for Science, Technology, and Culture (EFEETP) at the Department of Philosophy in Ioannina. Her current research interests include 20th-century phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophy, contemporary practical philosophy, philosophy of emerging technologies, and philosophical theories of modernity.

Friday September 13

Keynote Talk: Between nursing and philosophy … some wondering

Miriam Bender is a Professor at the University of California Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and the founding director of the school's Center for Nursing Philosophy. Her empirical research focuses on the relationships between healthcare delivery organization, multi-professional practice dynamics, and patient care quality and safety outcomes. The significant challenges she has encountered while exploring the dynamic complexities of nursing and healthcare have driven her to develop both methodological innovations and a philosophical approach to critique and unpack epistemological paradigms. These paradigms often advance determinate theories within a discipline (nursing) committed to the non-reducibility of the health/care experience.

Bender’s philosophical work emphasizes flux and contingency rather than stasis and unity as critical areas for nursing inquiry. She employs this perspective to develop novel nursing conceptualizations that better align with the discipline’s goals of promoting health and wellness for individuals, families, and communities. Her innovative approach seeks to enhance nursing's theoretical frameworks to address the evolving and complex nature of healthcare.