Rate My Professor Moira Gatens

Moira Gatens serves as Professor Emerita of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, within the Discipline of Philosophy in the School of Humanities. After completing her PhD, she began her academic career with a teaching position at Monash University in 1987, followed by an appointment at the Australian National University from 1987 to 1992. She returned to the University of Sydney in 1992 and was elevated to Challis Professor of Philosophy in 2012. Gatens holds ORCID identifier 0000-0001-9952-4813 and maintains an active profile in philosophical scholarship.

Her research specializations include social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, early modern philosophy, and philosophy and literature. Gatens has authored influential works such as Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (Routledge, 1996), which investigates how differently sexed bodies occupy social and political spaces through representations of sexual difference. She co-authored Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present (Routledge, 1999) with Genevieve Lloyd, applying Spinoza's ideas to contemporary feminist and political theory. Additionally, she edited Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), featuring re-examinations of Spinoza's philosophy from feminist perspectives. Other notable contributions include essays on Spinoza's notions of freedom, affect, and the imagination, as well as publications on George Eliot and philosophy. Her scholarship has been supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) funded projects, and she has undertaken visiting fellowships, including the Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in 2010. Gatens' work has had a substantial impact on feminist philosophy, Spinoza studies, and intersections of philosophy with literature and politics, evidenced by her h-index of 16 and citations across academic platforms.