Scala Foundation Co-Hosts a One-Day Symposium at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, England, July 1, 2025
Thomism, Creativity and the Arts: Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. Speakers include Sir James MacMillan, Margarita Mooney Clayton, James Matthew Wilson
The Scala Foundation is pleased to partner with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford; the Margaret Beaufort Institute and the Catholic Sacred Music Project for an exciting symposium on the arts, religion and culture in the modern world. This event, held on July 1, 2025, at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, draws together philosophers, theologians, musicians, poets, liturgists, and other artists to converse about the theme of human creativity. You may either attend in person or via live stream. All conference talks will be shared on Scala's YouTube channel afterwards.
Speakers include renowned Scottish composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan, Scala's Executive Director Margarita Mooney Clayton, James Matthew Wilson, Fr Dominic White, OP, Jan Benz, and Fr Brad Elliott, OP. See below for the full list of paper titles and speaker biographies, or download it here.
Peter Carter of the Catholic Sacred Music Project will direct choral music for Divine Office and Mass.
Find out more about the program and register for in-person or virtual attendance here
Jacques Maritain’s belief in the artist’s mission to ‘shelter the prayer, instruct the intelligence, and rejoice the eyes and the soul,’ provides an inspiring mandate to investigate art-making in the present age, in all its depth and variety. The conference includes plenary talks, panel discussions, poetry reading, music and film, and gathers a rich and diverse range of presenters from across the UK and USA, with the final keynote talk given by Sir James MacMillan, renowned Scottish composer and conductor. See below for a full list of talks and speaker biographies.
Find out more about the program and register for in-person or livestream attendance here
Here is the list of all speakers and their talk titles. For the full speaker biographies, download this document. For the timetable, please refer to the event registration page:
Sir James MacMillan: Setting the Words of the Mass to Music in the Secular Environment of
Our Time. A Catholic Composer’s Experience.
Alice Ramos: Jacques Maritain on the Artist’s Vision and Moral Character
Margarita Mooney Clayton: Imitation and Creativity - Music as Formative and Expressive
Fr. Brad Elliott, OP: Art and Imitation - The Role of Nature in the Human Artistic Act
Jan Bentz: Creative Intuition and Being in Art - Maritain and Gilson on Beauty
James Matthew Wilson: Form as“Ontological Secret”
Katja Frimberger: “Learning to Just Be There”: Film as Public Pedagogy
Albert Robertson, OP: Raïssa Maritain at Prayer - Suffering, Virtue, and Religious and
Creative Perception
Emma Mason: ‘Nocturnal Navigations’ - Raïssa Maritain’s Poetic and Mystical Gifts
Chris Grey: The Underscore of Maritain’s Poetics
Greg Kerr: Imitation and Distortion - Jacques Maritain and Flannery O’Connor and the
Power of the Story
Biographies of the speakers
Sir James MacMillan: James MacMillan is the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation. He first attracted attention with the acclaimed BBC Proms premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990). His percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel (1992) has received over 500 performances worldwide by orchestras, including London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and Cleveland Orchestra. Other major works include the cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), Quickening (1998) for soloists, children's choir, mixed choir and orchestra, the operas Inès de Castro (2001) and The Sacrifice (2005-06), St John Passion (2007), St Luke Passion (2013) and Symphony No.5: 'Le grand Inconnu' (2018). Recent highlights include MacMillan’s Stabat Mater for The Sixteen streamed from the Sistine Chapel and premieres of the 40-voice motet Vidi aquam, Christmas Oratorio streamed in 2021 by NTR Dutch Radio from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and the anthem Who Shall Separate Us? commissioned for the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. The annual Cumnock Tryst Festival was founded by the composer in 2014 in his childhood town in
Scotland.
Alice Ramos: Alice M. Ramos is recently named Professor Emerita of Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York and Adjunct Professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary in NY, teaching Natural Theology and Theological Aesthetics. She is a past president of the American Maritain Association (2002-2004).
Fr. Brad Elliott, OP: Fr. Bradley T. Elliott is a Dominican friar of the Western Dominican Province. In 2025, he completed a Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, focusing on the role of human craft and participatory governance in the social doctrine of the Church. He is currently a professor of Moral Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California.
Jan Bentz: Dr. Jan C. Bentz, earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from in Rome. He also holds two master’s degrees in Sacred Art, Architecture, and Liturgy, as well as Church, Ecumenism, and Religious Studies. He currently lectures at Blackfriars’ Studium in Oxford.
James Matthew Wilson: James Matthew Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. The author of fourteen books, his most recent collection of poems is Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds (Word on Fire, 2024).
Katja Frimberger: Katja Frimberger is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Her research interest lies in philosophy of arts/ aesthetic education. As performer, producer and educator, she regularly participates in film/education projects in collaboration with non-academic stakeholders. The recent Sci-Fi feature film "The Silent Messenger" (Dir. Simon Bishopp), in which Katja collaborated as performer, was nominated for the Heimspiel award at BIFF (Braunschweig International Film Festival, Germany) in November 2024.
Albert Robertson: Fr Albert Robertson, OP, is assistant chaplain at Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy to the University of Cambridge, and is assigned to the Dominican House in Cambridge. Before entering the Dominican Order, he studied anthropology at the LSE and the University of Oxford.
Emma Mason: Emma Mason is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research and teaching focus on poetry, theology, and philosophy and she has published widely in the field of Christianity and literature, including Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (OxfordUniversity Press, 2018), Her current project is on Catholic mysticism in the poetry and philosophy of Raïssa Maritain, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and Caryll Houselander.
Chris Grey: Christopher Grey is a Research Fellow at Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, and Lecturer in Theological Aesthetics at London School of Theology. He studied first at the Royal Academy of Music but has spent most of the subsequent years teaching in secondary and higher education. His principal interests are in philosophical / theological aesthetics, and Christianity and the Arts, notably from a Thomist perspective.
Greg Kerr: Greg Kerr is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at DeSales University. He received his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy from Boston College and Ph.D. from Fordham University, where he did his dissertation on Jacques Maritain’s aesthetics and the “useless” benefits of the aesthetic experience. He was former editor of the Maritain Notebook, the official newsletter of the American Maritain Association.
Margarita Mooney Clayton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she teaches on topics such as philosophy of social science, religion and immigration, ecumenical devotion to Mary, and aesthetics and Christian education. She is also a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall and an Associate Member of Las Casas Institute. In 2016, she founded The Scala Foundation, whose mission is to restore meaning and purpose to culture by focusing on the arts, liberal arts education, and worship. Her Publications include: Mary Mother of All: Woman, Image and Christian Wisdom (Forthcoming), The Wounds of Beauty: Seven Dialogues on Art and Education (2022).
