International Association for Presocratic Studies

Ninth Biennial Conference: 22-26 June 2026

Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)

Programme

Monday 22 June

9.00-10.00: Reception of the Participants 

(Central Hall, Ground floor)

​

10.00-11.00: Opening Ceremony 

(Paraninfo, Ground floor)

His Excellency the Ambassador of Greece to Spain, Mr. Apostolos Baltas

Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Prof. Dr. Eduardo Valls Oyarzun

Vice-dean for Academic Affairs and Infrastructure, Faculty of Philosophy, Prof. Dr. Lydia María de Tienda Palop

Prof. Dr. Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui (Chair of the Department of Classical Philology)

Prof. Dr. Antonio Rivera García (Chair of the Departament of Philosophy and Society)

Prof. Dr. Richard McKirahan (President of the IAPS)

Prof. Dr. Marco Antonio Santamaría (Organizer)

11.00-11.30: Coffee Break

11.30-13.30: Parallel Sessions

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Bernabé, Alberto. “Truth, Opinions and the Path of What Is. Conceptual Clarifications in Parmenides”.

Cordero, Néstor-Luis. “Une faute tragique: de la δόξα chez Parménide à la δόξα de Parménide” / “A tragic mistake: from δόξα in Parmenides to Parmenides' δόξα”.

Malaspina, Iulia. “La verità secondo Parmenide”.

Berruecos Frank, Bernardo. “Eleatism outside the “Eleatic school”. The Reception of Parmenides' Poem in Archaic Choral Poetry”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Santaniello, Carlo. “Presocratic Echoes: Looking for One’s Words in Others’ Works”.

Saudelli, Lucia. “A concept of freedom in Presocratic philosophy?”.

Crespo Saumell, Jordi. “What Did You Watch: Everything is Illuminated or The Man with the Ray Eyes?”.

Sperzagni, Nicholas. “Connecting cosmos and reproduction according to the Presocratics”.

13.30-15.30: Lunch

15.30-16.30: Parallel Sessions

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Valentinová, Lucie. “Minoan Visual Culture and the Image of Okeanos”.

Degutis, Mykolas. “Bridging the Gap Between Gods and Humans: Pherecydes’ Nuptial Myth and Epimenides’ Divine Origins of Society”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

d’Ippolito, Armando Francesco. “Perì Puròs kaì Phōtós: Evidence for the Presence and Evolution of a Physics of Light from the Presocratics to Plato”.

Alevizos, Konstantinos. “Necessità contro predeterminismo nel libro XXV sulla natura di Epicuro”.

16.30-17.00: Coffee break

17.00-18.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Németh, Attila. “Rhythmic Reconfiguration and Compatibilist Agency in Democritus”.

Kidd, Stephen. “Democritus and the Origin of “Self-Evidence” (to enarges) in Philosophy”.

Aguirre De la Luz, Nazyheli. “The Peripatetic outlook on Democritus’ theory of perception”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor). Online session

Mogyoródi, Emese. “ ‘Disclosure’, Poetry and Philosophy in Parmenides: The Journey, the Chasm and ‘Erotic Mysticism’ in the Proem”.

Ramón Cámara, Begoña. “Del papel jugado por el libro de Anaxágoras en el Fedón de Platón”.

Tuesday 23 June​

9.30-11.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Ménard, Étienne. “The Cosmology of Exhalations in Ionian Philosophy”.

Pulpito, Massimo. “A New Fragment of Zeno of Elea”.

Aleknienė, Tatjana. “Plato, Phaedo 95e–101e: A Turning Point from Presocratic Physics to Socratic Ethics”.

Iuliano, Lorenzo. “The Presocratic Philosophers and Ennius: The Emergence of The Latin Air”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Bergamo, Max. “Heraclitus, Homer, and the Lice: A Reassessment of Fragment 22 B56 DK (with Additional Greek and Syriac Evidence)”.

Scharle, Margaret. “Hesiodic Roots of Heraclitus’s Fire and Logos”.

Navarro González, Ángela-Bares Partal, Juan de Dios. “Heráclito y la tradición del enigma”.

Chaturvedi, Aditi. “Resituating Heraclitean Harmoniē”.

11.30-12.00: Coffe Break

12.00-13.00: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Ferella, Chiara. “What—or Who—is Anaximander’s Apeiron? Rethinking the Infinite as a Primordial Deity”.

Torrente, Luca. “The invention of the history of philosophy: Theophrastus, the forgotten founder”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Matera, Rosa. “On Democritus and the principle of plenitude”.

Bevacqua, Flavio. “A Prattler of Stupidities”: A First Assessment of Democritus(?) on Cosmic Sympathy (68 B300 DK)”.

13.00: Group photo of the participants at the entrance to the faculty

13.30-15.00: Lunch

15.00-16.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Sattler, Barbara. “Void in early Pythagoreanism”.

Gimenes de Campos, Rogério. “The inclination of the Heavens: Revisiting Oenopides of Chios”.

Valentino, Giulia. “The transmigration of the soul from Presocratic doctrines to the Orphic Rhapsodies”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor). Online session

Perricone, Fabio. “Death and Ethics in Democritus’ Thanatology: A Possible Reconstruction”.

Lebedev, Andrei. “Neglected epigraphical evidence on the so-called "Orphic" graffiti from Olbia, and the problem of relation between Orphism and Pythagoreanism”.

16.30-17.00: coffee break

17.00-18.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Mesquita, António Pedro. “On What There is Not. Protagoras on the Impossibility of Falsehood and Contradiction.”.

Pajón Leyra, Ignacio. “Parménides y Gorgias en las raíces del escepticismo”.

Keoseyan, Benjamin. “Eunomia and the Decline into Tyranny in Anonymous Iamblichi: A Socratic Precursor to Plato”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor). Online session

Heinemann, Gottfried. “Phusis in Early Greek Philosophy”.

Feldman, Sarah. “Semonides Fragment 1 and the “Negative” Solution to Epistemic Limits”.

Taglialatela, Giovanni. “Timon’s Philosophenspott as a lens on the pre-Socratic philosophers”.

Wednesday 24 June​

9.30-11.30:  Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

(Chair: Alberto Bernabé)

Sider, David. “Parmenides’ Proem: Sources, Language, and Purpose”.

Clay, Jenny Strauss. “Parmenides’ Proem: Ex oriente lux”.

Ferro, Francesco. “DK 28B1.2: the ὁδὸς πολύφημος as the Path of the Groundbreaking Announcement”

Montagnino, Marco. “The numerological figuration of Athena in the proem of Parmenides’ poem”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Brémond, Mathilde. “Catalogues of opinions: the Sophistic heritage”.

Di Maio, Chiara. “Anchoring Sophistic thought in the Greek tradition: Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and their Athenian followers”.

Lea, Luke. “What Would Grow from a Buried Bed? Antiphon on Nomos and Phusis”.

Guerrieri, Marco. “Investigating the MXG (On Melissus Xenophanes Gorgias)”.

11.30-12.00: Coffe Break

12.00-13.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Wrotkowski, Wojciech. “On the Value of Reading Heraclitus in the Primary Sources Preserving His Fragments (B98, B67, B53)”.

Thanassas, Panagiotis. “Heraclitus B 114: A Re-examination”.

Llorente Pescador, Manuel. “The Lyrical Tradition of pre-Socratic Ethics: Theognis, Heraclitus, and Parmenides”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Álvarez-Maldonado, Lucas. “The First Greek Plant Physiologist: Empedocles’ Botanical Theory”.

Audié, Prudence. “Plutarch’s Dionysian Empedocles”.

Loureiro Conte, Bruno. “Plutarch and Parmenides”.

13.30-15.00: Lunch

Free afternoon​

Thursday 25 June

9.30-11.30:  Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Gregory, Andrew. “Parmenides, Sufficient Reason and the Identity of Indiscernibles”.

Costa, Alexandre. “Parmenides, theory of names”.

Castelli, Arianna. “Light, Night, and Memory: Understanding Parmenidean Cognition”.

Nogueira Fontes, Luis Marcio. “[Melissus], DK30B9”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Kraus, Manfred. “Gorgias, Logos and Hippocratic Medicine”.

Rehbinder, André. “The Influence of Logos on the Soul: Gorgias, Empedocles and the Hippocratic Collection”.

Reus Engler, Maicon. “Gorgias and the Alteration of Consciousness: On the Effect of Lógos”.

Albano, Nicolò. “The false Musaeus. An interpretation of Onomacritus' Orakelfälschung (Hdt VII 6, 2-5)”.

11.30-12.00: Coffee Break

12.00-13.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Macris, Constantinos. “Pythagoras in Byzantium: Exploring the Anonymous Life of Pythagoras preserved in Patriarch Photius’ Myriobiblos”.

Nicolaides, Demetris. “Crystallized Space and Frozen Time: The Universes of Physicist Parmenides and Philosopher Einstein”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Kočandrle, Radim. “The Influence of Parmenides on Aristotle’s conception of spherical Earth”.

Lugani, Giorgia. “Catching Protagoras: Plato’s Pursuit of a Moving Target”.

Molina Alonso, Pablo. “Between Affection and Relativism: The Cyrenaic School and the Doctrine of the Secret Students of Protagoras in Plato’s Theaetetus”.

13.30-15.00: Lunch

15.00-16.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Esquivel Esquivel, Juan Carlos. “Aenesidemus on Heraclitus”.

Herrero de Jáuregui, Miguel. “Tatian as neos (anti-)Heraclitus”.

Sánchez Castro, Liliana Carolina. “Heraclitus in dialogue with contemporary environmental philosophy”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Macé, Arnaud. “Potential and actual infinity in the division of bodies from Zeno to the Atomists”.

Mazzanti, Leonardo. “Zeno’s Argument Against Plurality and the Case for Existence Monism”.

Isidoro Giráldez, Emilio. “La interpretación aristotélica de los argumentos de Zenón como paralogismos”.

16.30-17.00: coffee break

17.00-18.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

(Chair: Alberto Bernabé)

Matusova, Ekaterina. “Sophistic theories of language in the Derveni Papyrus”.

da Costa, Menezes. “El Papiro de Derveni (VII-XXVI) como un comentario filosófico a un texto enigmático”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

(Chair: Beatriz Bossi)

Peixoto, Miriam. “Between hubris and pleonexia: the faces of excess in Democritus' ethics”.

Jacob, Dawn. “Was Democritus A Eudaimonist?”.

Moretti, Matteo. “How Epicurean is Democritus? Telos, Eudaimonia, Hedonism, and Imperturbability in Democritus’ Ethics”.  

Friday 26 June​

10.00-11.30:  Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Torrijos-Castrillejo, David. “Mythology and Anaxagoras’ σπέρματα”.

Machín, Deyvis Deniz. “La atribución de la doctrina aire-dios a Diógenes de Apolonia”.

Šćepanović, Sandra. “Negative Temporal Clauses with the Indicative in Presocratic Fragments”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Álvarez Salas, Omar D. “A cognitive approach to the “mind” in Xenophanes and related thinkers”.

Duque, Mateo. “Still Is Still Moving to Me”: Parmenidean Being, the Block universe, and McTaggart’s B-Series”.

Stamatiou, Filippos – Rajcic, Nina. “Aletheia and Algorithms: Parmenides’ Lessons for Understanding Generative AI”.

11.30-12.00: Coffee Break

12.00-13.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

(Chair: Beatriz Bossi)

Wang, Yu. “Archelaus on Two Stages of Human Origin and Moral Conventionalism”.

Theodoroudi, Lia. “Don’t think of me as a patricide: Plato’s Sophist as a reinterpretation of Parmenides’ On Nature”.

Vergouli, Vasia. “How and why Plato and Aristotle see teleology where the Presocratics might not?”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Zamora Calvo, José María. “Ἀυγὴ ξηρά / Lux sicca. Porfirio, intérprete de Heráclito”.

Pompei, Diletta. “The Role of the Seven Sages in Stobaeus’ Anthologion: A Connection between Archaic Philosophy and Neoplatonic Ethics”.

Shaw, Michael M. “Infinite Problems in Anaxagoras”.

13.30-15.00: Lunch

15.00-16.30: Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Pavani, Anna. “Nous ex machina? Plato’s Socrates and Aristotle on Anaxagoras alleged 'unintelligent intellect' ”.

Trovato, Luigi. “Two forgotten testimonies on the Anaxagorean Noûs: Damascius (In Prm. I, 15.1-6 [Combès-Westerink]) and Proclus (In Prm. VII, 1214.8-9 [Cousin])”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor)

Hladký, Vojtěch. “Francesco Patrizi on Early Greek Philosophy”.

Martínez Cordone, Alberto. “Readdressing Lucas Holstenius’ edition of Democrates’ Gnomai (1638)”.

16.30-17.00: coffee break

17.00-18.30 Parallel Sessions:

Salón de Grados (Ground floor)

Pitteloud, Luca. “La Nature aime à se cacher : Rilke, Ramuz et l’écho moderne d’un fragment d’Héraclite”.

Nakayama, Patricia. “The power of convention: Democritus, Thomas Hobbes, and the birth of experimental science”.

Russo Gómez, Alessandro. “La «inocencia del devenir»: Anaxágoras y Heráclito interpretados por Nietzsche”.

Aula Ortega y Gasset (217, second floor). Online session

Höchsmann, Hyun. “Empedocles, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche – The Metamorphosis of Empedocles from a ‘Philosophical Centaur’ to a Philosophical Phoenix”.

Piangerelli, Federica. “Parmenides, Zeno, and the Eleatic Stranger. A “Philosophical Lineage” in Plato’s Sophist?”.

Provenza, Antonietta. “Paths of perception. Alcmaeon, Philolaus and Aristoxenus on aisthēsis and hearing”.

Padilla, Teresa. “La φύσις de Anaxágoras como modelo inteligente, ordenado, evolutivo y expansivo del Universo” / “Anaxagoras’ φύσις as an intelligent, ordered, evolutionary and expansive model of the Universe”.

19.00 Closing Session (Paraninfo, Ground floor)

Prof. Dr. Marco A. Santamaría (Organizer)

Prof. Dr. Richard McKirahan (President of the IAPS)