Academic Summary

Dr Gareth Polmeer is an artist and writer. He is a Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art and a recent Pearl Jubilee Research Fellow at Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, where he currently holds a Research Associateship. He has lectured and spoken widely, with recent presentations at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, the Institute for Classical Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University, and the Institute for the Study of Values and Spirituality at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași.

Dr Polmeer’s research at MBIT will explore connections between mysticism, apophaticism and images, building upon work undertaken in recent years during his Pearl Fellowship and a period as a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge. During his Research Associateship, he will be making new artworks, and working on a series of new publications

Recent Publications

• ‘Finding Participation: Kathleen Raine’s Poetry and the Search for Meaning’. In: Stephens, Jessica and Tardieu, Claire. (eds.) Kathleen Raine: A Voice for the Twenty-First Century. Peter Lang, 2025
• ‘Contemplation and Computation: Art, Image and Reality’. In: Bowen, Jonathan and Giannini, Tula. (eds.) The Arts and Computational Culture: Real and Virtual Worlds, London, Springer, 2024
• ‘Lasting Light: Plotinus, Likeness and Images.’ In: Stamatellos, Giannis, Patsioti, Ioanna and Finamore, John. (eds.) Anthology of Papers from the 19th ISNS Conference, 2023
• ‘Poetry, Language and Meaning: Barfield’s Early Writing and the Influence of Coleridge’, Coleridge Bulletin, No. 59, 2022

Recent Papers and Lectures

• Platonic Art Forms and the Digital Imagination. The Elusive Shape of the Platonic Tradition Lecture Series. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. November, 2024
• Iconicity and Meaning: Sacred Art in the Digital Age. Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi, Romania, September 2024
• Inspiration and Consciousness: Barfield on the Difference Between Plato and Plotinus. Barfield and Plotinus: Emanation and Evolution conference. Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, September 2024
• Art, Spirit and Artificial Intelligence. Yuan Dao Study Society, Hong Kong, June 2024
• Transcendent Forms and the Technological World. Platonism as a Living Tradition conference. Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, USA, May 2024
• Reflected Meaning: Mirroring, Modernity and Poetry. Metaphysical Poetry and the Thought of Adam Mickiewicz in the European Context conference. Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, September 2023
• Barfield’s Metaphysics: Language, Myth, Meaning and Participation. Participation and Subcreation: Creativity and the Experience of God in the Thought of O. Barfield and J.R.R. Tolkien. Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, 2023
• The Reciprocal Imagination. International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 20th Annual Conference, Sicily, 2023
• Unknowable Light: the Sacred Image and the Digital Age. Department of Classical Philology. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, 2023
• Inner Frames of Vision. International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 19th Annual Conference, Athens, 2022
• Appearance and Image: Neoplatonic Themes in Contemporary Aesthetics. Philosophy as a Way of Life Symposium, University of Ioannina, Greece, 2022
• Frames of Inner Vision. Forum for Advanced Studies. Rome, 2022
• Vision, Intuition and Silence. Stanley Rosen Workshop, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, 2022
• Poetry, Participation and Meaning. Temenos International Conference, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 2022

Affiliations

• Associate of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism
• Member of the Computer Arts Society (CAS)
• Member of the Forum for Advanced Studies (FSA)

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