ENN New Voices: Victoria Welby's Metaphysics: Interview with Emily Thomas

In this episode, Maheshi Gunawardane speaks with Emily Thomas, Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, about Victoria Welby, an early twentieth-century metaphysician. They explore her worldview built around motion, the idea of motion as energy, and the connections between motion, space, and time. Welby used her "philosophical salon" to discuss her metaphysics and cultivate an extensive intellectual network. Professor Thomas makes a novel contribution to the study of Welby's thought by drawing attention to the cohesive links between motion and matter, mind, space, change, and time. 

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Works mentioned in the episode: 

Petrilli, Susan. Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement. Semiotics, Communication and Cognition 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218510.

Stone, Alison. Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192874719.001.0001.

Thomas, Emily. Letters of English Women Philosophers 1902–1951. New Texts in the History of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/letters-of-english-women-philosophers-1902-1951-9780198944256?cc=gb&lang=en&

———. "Mary Calkins, Victoria Welby, and the Spatialization of Time." British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31, no. 2 (2023): 205–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2123780.

———. "Metaphysical Idealists in Britain: Constance Naden, Victoria Welby, and Arabella Buckley." In The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Lydia Moland and Alison Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197558898.013.34.

———. Victoria Welby. Elements on Women in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009345897.