Simone Kotva
Senior Lecturer
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and ReligionAbout Simone Kotva
Research and Teaching
I work at the intersection of Christian theology and Continental philosophy and theory. In my first book, Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2020), I approached Christian theology with tools from Pierre Hadot, Michel Foucault and the discourse around philosophy as a way of life. My second book, Ecologies of Ecstasy: Mysticism, Philosophy and Vegetal Life (under contract with Columbia University Press), addresses the question of nature in Christian theology through a dialogue with the vegetal turn and critical plant studies. Alongside these projects, I have conducted research on neglected contact zones between Western Christian mysticism and philosophy, especially in France, writing on Simone Weil and the French Spiritualist tradition (Maine de Biran, Félix Ravaisson and Henri Bergson). This has resulted in a major translation project: Félix Ravaisson, Fragments on Philosophy and Religion (Bloosmbury, 2025), co-authored with Victor-Emma Adamah and Clare Carlisle. I have authored over a dozen book chapters in the field of theology, religion and ecology, and the philosophy of religion, and have published in journals such as Modern Theology, Environmental Humanities, Journal of Philosophy and Theology, Religion & Literature, Worldviews and Theory, Culture & Society.
In my current work I engage methods from decolonial and indigenous (especially Sámi) theologies to think through tensions between ecology and religion in Scandinavian Christianity today. In 2023 I received collaborative funding with Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir from ReNEW/NordForsk for an interdisciplinary workshop on decoloniality featuring scholars in the social sciences and humanities, alongside theologians, a creative writer and a visual artist. Together with Ragnheiður Bogadóttir (University of the Faroe Islands) I am co-editing the workshop anthology, Moving Mountains: Co-Becoming in the North. I also have a chapter, “Revelation/s: an assay in decolonial theology,” forthcoming in a new anthology of systematic theology edited by Andreas Nordlander and Martin Westerholm.
I have had the opportunity to participate in several research projects. At Cambridge I received funding from the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH): “Theologies of Reading” (2017-2018); and “Magic and Ecology” (2020-2021). As an invited member, I have participated in two Templeton-funded projects, with contributions published in New Directions in Religion and Science: Beyond Dialogies, eds. Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson (Routledge, 2022), and Astonishment and Science: Engagements with William Desmond, ed. Paul Tyson (Vertias, 2023).
Teaching (Autumn Semester 2025)
- RT 1334 HT25 Religionsfilosofi (BA)
- RT 1332 HT25 Teologiska klassiker (BA) with Miriam Sünder
- RT 2311 HT25 Doctrine of God (MA)
- RT 2327 HT25 Modern Theology (MA)
- RT 2312 HT25 Ethics, Theology and Society (MA)
Education and Background
I was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. After attending an upper secondary/high school for music, I moved to the UK where I studied for a BA in Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity. This was followed by an MPhil and PhD at the Faculty of Divinity, where I received my theological training and also began teaching undergraduates. In 2015 I defended my dissertation, Repetition and Reciprocity: Philosophies of Suffering in the Stoicisms of Gilles Deleuze and Simone Weil, a comparative study of atheist and religious philosophy in French intellectual life. After finishing my doctoral program at the University of Cambridge I worked part time as a lecturer in systematic theology at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg. In 2016 I was appointed Research Fellow in Theology at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and was also made Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity. In 2020 I moved to Oslo where I took up a position as Research Fellow at the Faculty of Theology on the University of Oslo-funded project, ECODISTURB. In 2025 I returned to Gothenburg as Senior Lecturer in theology at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion.
Monday Mysticism
Monday Mysticism is an online reading group for the study of spiritual exercises in the Western contemplative heritage. I run this group for theology students at the University of Gothenburg but additional spaces are available upon request. Contact me at simone.kotva@lir.gu.se for more information. In this term's edition of Monday Mysticism, we'll be reading our way through Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology (Fr. original 1901). This classic of the manualist tradition is a dazzling, detailed (some would say forensic) but above all pragmatic study of contemplation.