Biography

Ted Toadvine is Nancy Tuana Director of the Rock Ethics Institute and professor of philosophy in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts. He is an affiliate of Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment and the Penn State Social Thought Program. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Oberlin College, and Kalamazoo College and has held research fellowships with the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, and the Oregon Humanities Center. 

Toadvine specializes in contemporary European philosophy and environmental philosophy. His latest book is The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). His is also author of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern 2009), editor or translator of six books, and has published more than fifty refereed journal articles and book chapters on topics including animality, biodiversity, climate change, embodiment, environmental aesthetics, intersubjectivity, ontology, philosophical method, and temporality.

In 2003, he coined the term “ecophenomenology” to designate an approach to environmental theory that draws on the phenomenological tradition while critically reorienting its relationship with ecology and naturalism. Ecophenomenology is now a recognized field of study across the environmental humanities with proponents in ecocriticism, the arts, architecture, and animal studies, as well as philosophy. 

Throughout his career, Toadvine has partnered with scholars and practitioners in other fields—including biologists, artists, architects, literary scholars, and community organizers—on such topics as climate ethics, food sovereignty, environmental justice, restoration ecology, biodiversity conservation, and environmental art and design. Through these collaborations, he has explored the role of philosophy and the humanities in interdisciplinary research and public engagement. 

Toadvine co-directs the book series Contributions to Phenomenology (Springer) and serves on the boards of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, and the International Merleau-Ponty Circle. 

His current projects include The Cambridge Introduction to Environmental Humanities (co-authored with Jay Fiskio) and a new edition of Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (edited with Nicolas de Warren).