This summer, from Friday evening to Sunday Afternoon, June 16-18, the Bertrand Russell Society will hold its 50th Annual Meeting at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City.

At the annual meeting, there will be talks both on Russell’s public philosophy, for fans of his more popular works, and talks on his more technical writings, for the academically-inclined wonks who will also be there. Thus, the first talk on Saturday (by Tony Simpson) will, believe it or not, be about the house Russell lived in (Carn Voel) during the 1920s and the last talk on Sunday, at noon, by David Blitz, will be on Russell’s theory of Social Reconstruction. But to keep the wonks happy, there will also be talks like Russell Wahl’s Saturday morning talk on “Logic and Intuition in the Russell-Poincaré debate” and the Saturday afternoon talk on (Bertrand) Russell’s views on causality. And still other talks are certain to stray from the subject of the conference altogether, with one wandering so far astray as to be on Thomas Kuhn and incommensurability. So whatever your specific interests in Russell are or are not, there will be something there for you.

More than this, talks will be both in person and on Zoom, so members around the world can attend. And there is no registration fee, even to attend in person.

So start planning to attend now!

The Society held its 2022 Annual Meeting at McMaster University in Canada, but in 2020 and 2021, the AM was held online, hosted by BRS President, David Blitz. In doing this, the BRS quickly learned the advantages of online meetings, and a regular series of online talks called Russelliana ensued. The series is still ongoing.

The most recent Russelliana talk was “Bertrand Russell and Jane Addams on war and peace,” held on April 15th, with speakers Marilyn Fischer and Barb Lowe of the Jane [Addams] Collective, in which they showed how Russell and Addams both used the era’s scientific theories to describe their views of pacificsm and to account for why civilization so regularly descends into war, but nevertheless differed in their criticisms of war and in what counts as progress in civilization.

Other Russelliana talks include “Russell, Pugwash and Nuclear Weapons,” on Saturday, February 11th and another on November 13th by Russell Society member Peter Stone, on Russell’s little book What is Democracy. And still other Russelliana talks include one on Frank Russell by Ruth Derham, who has just written a book on Frank, and still others, including one on “George Orwell and Bertrand Russell” and one on Russell and Wittgenstein.

Further Russelliana talks will be scheduled after this year’s Annual Meeting. Be sure to keep an eye out for them.

Students! The Russell Society invites submissions for its annual Student Paper Prize for the best new paper on Russell by either a graduate or undergraduate student.

Winners of the Student Prize read their papers at the Annual Meeting. Submissions for this year’s prize are closed, but will be open soon for next year’s. See details here.

The newstand magazine, Philosophy Now, devoted its June 2017 issue to articles about Russell on passion, logic, the value of philosophy, and if humans are rational.

In 2016, the annual meeting was held June 24-26 at St. John Fisher College in Rochester NY. Rick Lewis, editor of Philosophy Now, was keynote speaker.

Here are some pages that will be useful to anyone studying Russell. First, for a quick view of Russell’s life, we have a detailed online Russell chronology of the major events and publication dates in his life.

In addition to the chronology, we have a complete (yes, a complete) online Russell bibliography listing every book, article, book review, collection of essays, pamphlet, letter to the editor, and press release Russell ever wrote.

After this, you will find over 100 books and articles by Russell online and ready to read on our Russell books and articles webpage.

Finally, for a nearly complete list, with links, of the best books on Russell’s philosophy, see this list of books that have received the Russell Society’s Book Award. Our aim, in other words, is to be a useful place to wander for anyone interested in Russell.

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