Southeastern professor receives fellowship in London
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 
by: Tonya Lowentritt
HAMMOND – Southeastern Louisiana University Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey Bell
is temporarily living abroad thanks to a prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship. This semester
Bell, a resident of Covington, is working as a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor
at the School of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy at Royal Holloway
College in the University of London.
The Leverhulme Trust awards such grants to institutions in Britain that wish
to invite an eminent researcher from overseas for an extended stay to enhance the
knowledge and skills of their academic staff or student body, said History and Political
Science Department Head William Robison. Bell will be advising the philosophy unit
at Royal Holloway about how they might develop a specialization in philosophy that
bridges the differences between analytic and continental philosophy.
“Professor Jeffrey Bell is a very worthy recipient of the extremely prestigious
Leverhulme grant,” Robison said. “He has an extensive record of top-quality scholarship
that would be stunning if he were at an Ivy League university with a fraction of the
teaching load he has at Southeastern.”
A member of the Southeastern faculty since 1993, Bell earned master’s and doctoral
degrees from Tulane University and was the recipient of the 2010 President’s Award
for Excellence in Research. He is the author of “Deleuze’s Hume: Philosophy, Culture
and the Scottish Enlightenment,” “The Problem of Difference: Phenomenology and Poststructuralism,”
and “Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference.”
“Jeffrey Bell has an international reputation, especially for his work on the
philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and has been an invited speaker at conferences in America,
Asia, and Europe. His books are well-reviewed, and he enjoys the esteem of the best
scholars in his field,” Robison said. “Moreover, he is one of the best teachers in
a department full of good teachers and is the only member of the Department of History
and Political Science to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in history, philosophy,
and political science. It is no exaggeration to describe him as a superstar. He has
made the department and the university proud.”
As part of his fellowship responsibilities, Bell will give three public lectures
related to his research, as well as a series of six research seminars. He also has
speaking engagements scheduled at Dundee University, Manchester University, University
of Warwick, and Nottingham University.
