Catherine of Siena Teaching Fellowship

The Ethics Program has among its excellent faculty two scholars who have received the Catherine of Siena Ethics Teaching Fellowship. Usually these are younger scholars who we think can contribute greatly to the teaching mission of the Ethics Program. These Fellowships are one year postdoctoral appointments, renewable up to three years.

The Fellows are teaching the introductory Ethics course, with occasional opportunities to teach in the departments of:

• Philosophy
• Theology & Religious Studies 
• Humanities and Augustinian Traditions
• As well as in the Center for Peace & Justice Education

In addition, they are very involved in the various student-centered activities that the Ethics Program sponsors.

Current Fellows

Dr. Christopher Roberts
Before coming to Villanova, my family and I lived in London, where I completed my Ph.D. at King's College, University of London. I have recently published a new book, based on my Ph.D. thesis, Creation and Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in and for the Moral Theology of Marriage. Before becoming an academic and going abroad for study, I spent several years as a television journalist at PBS, most recently as a reporter for the program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Currently my research interests include Christianity and money; Christian doctrine, worship, and ethics; as well as theology and political theory. My M.Phil. thesis at Oxford was about just war, pacifism, and eschatology. My B.A. thesis at Yale was about environmental ethics and economic development in Zimbabwe. A friend of mine once said that Christian theology is a great intellectual secret; few of the devout, not to mention non-Christians as well as ordinary church-goers, get the chance to plumb its depths and riches, and I’d like to help change that.

Kathryn Getek
Kathryn is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology at Boston College in Theological Ethics. Her dissertation, under the direction of Professor James Keenan, S.J., develops a virtue ethics approach to justice with application toward the reform of the American prison. As Catholic Chaplain at Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston from 2006-2008, Kathryn developed her thinking about prisons as well as her pastoral ministry to the incarcerated. She received her Masters in Theological Studies (2003) and License in Sacred Theology (2008) from Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to her interests in justice, virtue, and fundamental moral theology, Kathryn has also researched in the area of bioethics, reflecting her undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Princeton University (1999). Kathryn recently finished a term serving as a student representative to the Board of the Society of Christian Ethics and is currently the United States representative to the New Scholars Committee for Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church.

Dr. Mark Wilson
Before coming to Villanova, I received my Honors B.A. in Classical Studies and Theology from Saint Louis University. After a few years of teaching middle school and running a tennis center, I matriculated to Indiana University where I completed my Ph.D. in Religious Studies, specializing in philosophical and religious ethics. My research and teaching interests are driven by foundational questions about responsibility, self-interpretation, human agency, and the emotions. Underlying my approach is a comparative analysis that highlights the points of convergence and divergence in secular and religious perspectives. I am currently working on a book, entitled The Virtues of Regret: Agency and Emotional Responsibility, which explores the way that emotions like regret can have distinct and profound moral significance. I am also researching a larger project that contrasts ancient and modern concepts of purity of heart, beginning with early Christian texts and concluding with an investigation of modern thinkers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.