UNCA Professor to Direct International Research Project

Gordon A. Wilson, UNC Asheville chair and professor of philosophy, has been invited by the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, to coordinate an international team of researchers who are producing the complete works of the medieval philosopher Henry of Ghent. As director of this project, Wilson will coordinate the research of Belgian, German, Dutch, Italian, Canadian, and American scholars. Forty-five volumes are anticipated in this series. Fifteen volumes, three of them by Wilson, are currently in print and 15 others are currently in preparation. Plans are in place for the final volumes.

The series was first promised by F. Cardinal Ehrle in the 1880s. Then the Belgians announced plans for it in the 1900s, but the world wars prevented it from happening. In the 1970s the De Wulf-Mansion Center of the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven took on the task of publishing these volumes. Recently scholars at the Thomas Institut at the University of Cologne described this research project as representing the historical method of research at its highest level.

Wilson’s articles and books have been referred to in American, Canadian, British, German, Italian, Belgian and Portugese literature. He has researched manuscripts in the Vatican Library and the university libraries in Salamanca, Paris, Bologna and Leipzig.

Wilson, a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellow, joined UNCA’s faculty in 1997. He has also been a gasthoogleraar, a guest senior professor, at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Wilson is a past recipient of three other NEH grants and is a former Fulbright Senior Fellow and a United Negro College Fund Distinguished Scholar. Wilson holds a doctorate degree in philosophy from Tulane University and has completed post-doctoral work at Cornell, Columbia, and Princeton.

Media Contacts:

• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526