Husserl Archives Leuven are inviting you to the 2025 Husserl Memorial Lecture, that will take place in Leuven, Belgium on 15.05, 16:30–18:00,
at the Institute of Philosophy (KU Leuven),
in the Kardinaal Mercierzaal, followed by a reception.
This year, we are proud to announce a lecture by
Lisa Guenther
One is Not Born, But Rather Becomes Normal: Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Lifeworld
Lisa Guenther is one of the most original and influential voices in contemporary philosophy, working at the intersection of phenomenology, social and political philosophy, critical race theory, feminism, and critical prison studies. Guenther’s work is deeply rooted in the phenomenological tradition – notably drawing on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas – while engaging with social and political struggles. Her approach to critical phenomenology interrogates how structures of confinement, violence, racism, colonialism, and exclusion shape lived experience, while also attending to practices of resistance and solidarity.
She has published extensively in phenomenology, feminism, prison studies, and critical race studies, with recent work addressing topics such as police violence, prisoner resistance, abolition, and carceral space. Her landmark book Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (2013) offers a powerful critique of the U.S. prison system, drawing on phenomenology, first-person narratives, and political theory to examine the lived experience of isolation. In Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration (2015), co-edited with Geoff Adelsberg and Scott Zeman, she brings together philosophical and activist perspectives to rethink incarceration, punishment, and the death penalty. Her earlier work, The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction (2006), explores themes of alterity and ethics in the context of reproductive politics. She is currently working on a book about a critical phenomenology of prison abolition and decolonization on Turtle Island: No Prisons on Stolen Land: A Critical Phenomenology of Carceral Colonial Power.
A Queen’s National Scholar in Political Philosophy and Critical Prison Studies at Queen's University (Canada), Guenther also teaches philosophy classes to people incarcerated at Collins Bay Institution through the Walls to Bridges Program. Previously, she taught at Vanderbilt University and facilitated a discussion group with men on death row in Tennessee called REACH Coalition. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the P4W Memorial Collective.
Beyond academia, Guenther has engaged in public philosophy through her work with incarcerated individuals and through contributions to media outlets such as The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Aeon, and CBC’s Ideas.
You can discover the list of her publications and research activities here.
We will be happy to see you attend!