Conference Speakers
This is not an all-inclusive list of speakers.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Holly Ordway
Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies. She is the author of Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, which received the 2022 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies. Her new book, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography, will be released in August, in time for the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death.
Keynote Speaker
Fr. Michael Ward
Fr Michael Ward is the author of the award-winning and best-selling Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press), and of After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic). He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press) and presented the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Dr Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, London. A member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford in his native England, Dr Ward is also Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University. He is a priest in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, assisting at Holy Rood Church, Oxford, alongside his work as an academic. He played the role of Vicar in the film ‘The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis’ and handed a pair of X-ray spectacles to Agent 007 in the James Bond movie ‘The World Is Not Enough.’
Dr. Erik Ellis
Dr. Erik Ellis is assistant professor of education at Hillsdale College. He earned a B.A. in the University Scholars Program at Baylor University with major concentrations in Greek and Latin and a minor concentration in History. He stayed at Baylor to earn an M.A. in History, and upon graduation, worked as a teacher for five years. He then received master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Notre Dame’s Classics Department and Medieval Institute, and then taught Latin, Greek, and Literature courses at the Universidad de los Andes (Chile) before returning to the US. As a researcher, Dr. Ellis focuses his efforts on tenth-century Byzantium and sixteenth-century Northern Europe, spending much time with Constantine Porphyrogennitos, Thomas More, Erasmus, and Juan Luis Vives, although he often allows himself to be distracted by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He is enthusiastic about sacred choral music, visiting remote places, and speaking classical and modern foreign languages.
Dr. Paul Gondreau
Paul Gondreau, S.T.D., is professor of theology at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he teaches courses on Christ, on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, and on human sexuality and marriage, as well as on the Catholic vision of J.R.R. Tolkien. He has published widely in the areas of Christology, Thomistic ethics, especially as regards the moral meaning and purpose of human sexuality, and the theology of disability. He has given lectures for the Thomistic Institute on the Catholic vision of The Lord of the Rings.
Joshua Hren
Joshua Hren is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Joshua regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books and First Things, America and Public Discourse, The European Conservative and The University Bookman. He has written seven books: Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; a novel Infinite Regress; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism.
Cristina A. Montes
Atty. Cristina A. Montes graduated magna cum laude and Batch Salutatorian from the University of Asia and the Pacific in 1997 with an AB in Humanities Specializing in Philosophy. Afterwards, she obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the UP College of Law in 2005 and passed the Bar Exams. In 2012, she obtained a master’s degree in law from the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and is currently a candidate for the degree in Doctor of Juridical Science at the San Beda University Graduate School of Law where she also lectures. She currently practices law at the Hildawa & Montes Law Offices. In addition to teaching at the San Beda University Graduate School of Law, she is a member of the faculty of the UA&P-SLG Institute of Law.
In addition to being a lawyer, Montes is also a writer who has published feature and op-ed articles. Some of her poetry has been published by the Dappled Things literary journal. She recently published Amihan, a YA-historical fiction novelette to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines.
Dr. Melinda Nielsen
Melinda Nielsen is an associate professor of literature in the Great Texts Program at Baylor University, where she teaches great books from Homer to Aquinas to Tolkien. She received her PhD in English from the University of Notre Dame and works on the translation and reception of classical culture into medieval English, particularly through the lens of manuscript studies. She is the author of more than a dozen articles on the Boethian and Chaucerian traditions, and translator of The Speculum Humanae Salvationis: The Mirror of Human Salvation (Brill, 2022). Lately, she has returned to her first love, the Oxford greats, and their transformation of Catholic literary culture. Her newest book, Festivals of Faith: The Sermons of St John Henry Newman for the Liturgical Year (Cenacle Press, 2023), arranges and introduces Newman’s magnificent homilies for reading across the Christian year.
Dr. Andrew Seeely
Andrew Seeley is co-founder and President of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education. He received a Licentiate from the Pontifical Institute in Medieval Studies in Toronto and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. Over his three decades as a Tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in California, Dr. Seeley completed teaching every subject in its demanding, integrated Great Books curriculum. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Augustine Institute. He is co-author of Declaration Statesmanship: A Course in American Government. Desiring to share his love of learning and teaching, Dr. Seeley co-founded the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education in 2005, where he served as Executive Director for 12 years, and continues to contribute as a board member and a Faculty Consultant. He became Executive Director of the Arts of Liberty Project in 2021. In recognition of his work in the renewal of liberal education, he has been named as the 2023 recipient of the Circe Institute’s Paideia Prize.
Thomas W. Stanford
Thomas W. Stanford, III (Trey) is Professor of English Language and Literature at Christendom College, where he serves as Chairman of the English Department. His degrees are from the University of Dallas and The Catholic University of America He has published essays on Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, the New Critics, and Wendell Berry, among other writers. He and his wife, Mary, have seven children, who have nicknamed the family’s dented, paint-peeling, giant white van “Azog.”