We are pleased to announce that the Fr. Val McInnes Chair at the Angelicum will be held this academic year by Fr. Mariusz Tabaczek, OP (autumn 2023) and Fr. Albino Barrera, OP (spring 2024).
The McInnes Chair has been endowed to foster excellence in the teaching and scholarship of the sacred sciences at the Angelicum. The Chair is named for Fr. Val McInnes, OP, who had a deep lover for the Order’s intellectual life as well as a great desire to support these efforts.
Mariusz Tabazek, OP holds a Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, Church Licentiate in theology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Dr. habil. in philosophy from the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland. He currently works as a professor, vice-dean of theology, and researcher of the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He is also a lecturer at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Krakow.
He specializes in the science-theology dialogue and the issues concerning divine action and natural sciences, in particular. He is interested in systematic, fundamental, and natural theology, philosophy of nature, philosophy of science (philosophy of biology, in particular), philosophy of causation, and metaphysics.
He published a number of articles on metaphysics and the issues concerning the relation of theology and science in Zygon, Theology and Science, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Nova et Vetera, Forum Philosophicum, and Scientia et Fides. He is the author of three books: Emergence. Towards A New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), Divine Action and Emergence. An Alternative to Panentheism (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), and Theistic Evolution. A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He also coauthored two chapters in the second edition (2017) of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (ed. by Gary Ferngren).
Albino Barrera, O.P. is Professor of Economics and Theology at Providence College (RI, USA). He is a friar of the St Joseph Province (New York) of the Order of Preachers. His research interests are economic ethics and the Church’s poverty alleviation work.
He has taught Development Economics, International Trade Theory and Policy, Catholic Social Thought, and Theological Ethics for Business and Economics, among other courses. His most recent book is Catholic Missionaries and Their Work with the Poor (Routledge, 2019).
His earlier books are listed in Amazon.com. His forthcoming book is Compassion-Justice Conflicts and Christian Ethics (Cambridge, November 2023). He is the lead editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Religion and Economic Ethics (Oxford, January 2024).
