Caledonia Fellowship

Carberry Tower in East Lothian, Scotland.

Caledonia Fellowship

September 10-15, 2023
Carberry Tower, East Lothian, Scotland

About the Fellowship

The Caledonia Fellowship brings together a selective group of professionals committed to preserving and advancing the principles of liberty, prosperity, and beauty. Over six days of intensive seminars with renowned scholars, fellows explore the foundational principles of Western civilization and culture, with a special emphasis on the thinkers and ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Convened at historic Carberry Tower in East Lothian, Scotland (fifteen minutes outside of Edinburgh), the Caledonia Fellowship provides an opportunity for participants to explore the interrelationships among liberty, prosperity, and beauty while acquiring the necessary tools to further their education and become effective leaders in their respective communities and career fields.

 

Sample Topics
  • The First Principles of Liberty
  • Ancient and Modern Political Thought
  • The Moral Foundations of Economic Behavior
  • Tocqueville and Intermediary Institutions
  • Scruton and the Listening Culture
  • Defending Western Civilization
  • The Ethics of Nationalism
  • Building Humane Cities
  • Conservation and Stewardship

2023 Class of Caledonia Fellows

Ms. Jessica Andrews is communications director for Senator John Kennedy and served as a senior advisor with his 2022 campaign. She was previously communications director for the House Judiciary Committee (Republicans) during the Mueller investigation and 2019 impeachment proceedings, after serving at the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research in the United Arab Emirates. She holds an M.Div. from Southern Seminary as well as a B.B.A. and B.A. from Mercer University.

Mr. Tomasz Bachosz is a lead growth engineer at Inflow, a Y-Combinator backed startup which develops the number one solution in the world for ADHD management. He was previously an entrepreneur with startups founded in N.Y.C. and San Francisco with V.C. backing. He holds M.Sc. in computer science from the University of Oxford, a B.Sc. in computer science from New York University Abu Dhabi, and was named in Poland’s Forbes 25 under 25 for his developments in new technologies.

Ms. Joanna Baron is executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. She was the founding national director of the Runnymede Society and previously practiced law as a criminal defense barrister. She studied law at McGill University and classical liberal arts at St. John’s College (Annapolis and Santa Fe).

Ms. Eva Chipiuk is a lawyer who most recently represented leaders of the Freedom Convoy and cross examined the sitting prime minister of Canada. She launched a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the government and Canada’s public broadcasting company for negligence and misinformation, and has started a podcast to help Canadians understand their legal rights and political processes so they can be more active citizens. She holds a B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Alberta, an L.L.B. from the University of Ottawa, and an L.L.M. in alternative dispute resolution from York University—Osgoode Hall Law School.

Mr. Michael Connors is a postgraduate scholar with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, currently completing an M.A. in liberal arts at St. John’s College. Prior to moving to the U.S., he was the director of music at Cammeray Public School and the North Shore Community Band, in Sydney, Australia. He holds a B.M. from the Queensland Conservatorium and a graduate diploma of education from Griffith University.

Mr. Øyvind J.V. Evenstad is a schoolteacher and freelance writer living in Oslo, Norway. He is one of the founders of the Norwegian association for all conservative students (FAKS) and former leader of its first chapter. He holds an M.A. in ancient philosophy, a B.A. in philosophy and history of ideas, and a postgraduate certificate in education from the University of Oslo, as well as having completed courses in English and religious education from the University of York and the University of Glasgow.

Mr. Ethan Green is an award-winning researcher into the collapse of Roman democracy. He has written and lectured on numerous subjects such as constitutional theory and the English Civil War. As a student at Exeter University, he was an international debater and president of multiple debating societies. Currently, he works alongside Ideas Matter to organize events in support of freedom of expression such as the Battle of Ideas Festival and salons within Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Ms. Paige Hunter holds a B.A. from McGill University and a M.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh. Her graduate thesis focused on Canadian security and foreign policy toward the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. During the 2021 Canadian federal election campaign, Paige was the candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada for New Westminster-Burnaby. She currently lives in Vancouver where she works as a security risk consultant and crime statistics analyst.

Mr. Peter Kaemingk is a researcher and lecturer in philosophy of law at Leiden University. He is also the founder of the Pascal Institute. He holds an M.A. in philosophy of religion from Harvard University and a B.A. from St. John’s College (Annapolis).

Mrs. Ellie Krasne-Cohen is the founder of Krasne Strategies, a consulting firm. She is a senior fellow at Parents Defending Education, visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, and an A.E.I. Civic Renewal Fellow. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Kansas, and an M.A. in divinity from the University of Chicago.

Mr. Austin Lamb is a Ph.D. student of political theory and American politics at Boston College. He holds an M.A. in political science from Boston College, as well as a B.S. in political science and a B.A. in Spanish from Boise State University. He has written for American Purpose, The American Conservative, The American Mind, and Bright Lights Film Journal.

Mrs. Agata Lupoměská served as deputy director of the Office of the Head of the Foreign Service and Political Expert to the Ambassador to the Court of St. James. She previously worked at the Centre of Political Thought in Kraków, Poland’s oldest conservative think-tank. She holds an M.A. in international relations from the Jagiellonian University, where she also studies law, with a focus on public international law and European law.

Dr. Selena Milanovic is a biomedical engineer dedicated to harnessing the potential of technology to enhance the quality and healthcare accessibility. Having completed a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, Selena became an expert advisor at Siemens, where she cooperates with international policy makers and was twice honored as a Forbes Under 30 leader in science and healthcare.

Ms. Ella Nixon is a curator and third year Ph.D. candidate at Northumbria University. Her research pertains to the transformative power of art, twentieth-century female artists, and regional art galleries. She completed a B.A. in history at the University of Cambridge followed by an M.A. in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London.

Ms. Annie Phillips is the executive director of Renaissance at SAINT in London. She was previously a media and policy advisor to an Australian M.P. and has worked in strategy and research across various industries and sectors. She holds an M.Phil. in public policy from Cambridge University and a B.Com. majoring in commercial law and public sector management from Macquarie University.

Mr. Samuel Rapinoja de Carvalho is an assistant to a member of the Finnish parliament. Previously he worked as a secretary for the Finns Party Youth, of which he is currently a board member. He is also chairman of the Finns Party Youth Uusimaa region and a member of the board in the Espoo local chapter of the Finns Party.

Dr. Loren Rotner is assistant chief academic officer and assistant professor of intellectual foundations and political philosophy at the University of Austin. From 2017-2021, he served as the special assistant to President Pano Kanelos and visiting tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. He earned his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, his M.A. from UT-Austin, and B.A. from Kenyon College, all in political science.

Ms. Lindsay Shepherd is a columnist at the Canadian news organization True North, as well as author of Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis. Lindsay is on the board of directors of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. She holds an M.A. in cultural analysis and social theory from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a B.A. in communication and political science from Simon Fraser University.

Dr. Jowita Thor is a historian specializing in the history of women, law, religion, and sexuality in Britain and Ireland. From October 2023, she will work as an economic and social research council postdoctoral fellow at the Law School, University of Strathclyde. She previously worked as a research assistant for a project on Ireland’s Magdalene laundries at the Centre for Crime and Social Justice (Strathclyde), and a project manager at the Centre of Theology and Public Issues (Edinburgh). Jo was educated at Universities of Edinburgh, and Tübingen. Her doctoral research explored the history of Protestant Magdalene Asylums in Scotland.

Mr. Ofir Zigelman is senior manager of product management, expansion strategy at Amazon Web Services (A.W.S.). Prior to A.W.S., he served as senior intelligence officer in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and team commander in Unit 8200, an elite Israeli intelligence technology unit. He also served as a research fellow at Harvard, and holds a law degree from Tel Aviv University, an M.B.A. from Wharton, an M.P.A. from Harvard, and an M.A. in international relations from Cambridge.

Distinguished Faculty Include

Mr. Benjamin Crocker is academic programs manager at UATX in Austin, Texas, and since 2022, has been research fellow in music studies at Common Sense Society. He is from North Queensland, Australia, and most recently taught at the King’s School in Sydney. Ben has lectured and guest conducted at the University of Sydney and recorded for nationwide radio broadcast at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2021, he was appointed as an inaugural Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation scholar to Washington, D.C. His columns have been published by The Spectator, The Federalist, and Australia’s Quadrant magazine.

Theodore Dalrymple (the pen name of Dr. Anthony Daniels) is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is a retired physician who, most recently, practiced in a British inner-city hospital and prison. Denis Dutton, editor of Arts & Letters Daily, called Dalrymple the “Orwell of our time.”

Prof. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, where he was the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Diller-von Fustenburg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Ferguson is the author of twenty-two books, including Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, which gives a historical and theoretical account of disasters, and Civilization: The West and the Rest, which traces the development of Eastern and Western culture and shows where they stand today. His 2015 biography of Henry Kissinger, Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, won the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Prize. He is also an award-winning filmmaker, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His many other prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012), and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is a senior fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. The author of eight books, including The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom and Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice, she has published over two hundred articles and reviews and makes frequent appearances on radio and television. Over three decades, she has also taught at the National Defense University, George Washington University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the Institute of World Politics, and currently at American University.

Dr. Joshua Mitchell is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and a professor of political theory at Georgetown University. He has also been chairman of the government department and associate dean of faculty affairs at Georgetown University in Qatar. He has published several books including The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future and American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time.

Dr. James Orr is associate professor of philosophy of religion in the faculty of divinity at the University of Cambridge, a position he took up after four years as McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow in Theology, Ethics, and Public Life at Christ Church, Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in philosophy of religion from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in classics from Balliol College, Oxford. Before entering academia, he worked for several years in corporate law.

Dr. Maria Pia Paganelli is a professor of economics at Trinity University. She is the author of The Routledge Guidebook to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and co-edited the Oxford Handbook on Adam Smith and Adam Smith and Rousseau. She formerly served as vice president of the History of Economics Society and the book review editor for the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. She is the current president of the International Adam Smith Society, and the president-elect of the History of Economics Society.

Dr. Roger Pilon is a senior fellow in the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, which he founded in 1989 and directed until 2019; the inaugural holder emeritus of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, Cato’s first endowed chair, established in 1998; the publisher emeritus of the Cato Supreme Court Review, which he founded in 2001; and Cato’s vice president for legal affairs, which he was named in 1999. Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including in the Departments of State and Justice. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.

Dr. David C. Rose is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is also a member of the Missouri Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He is widely published on these and other topics, including business ethics, E.S.G. investment and management, global warming, and monetary policy. In 2008, Dr. Rose received the St. Louis Business Journal’s Economic Educator of the year award. His book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, was selected as one of CHOICE’s outstanding titles of 2012. His most recent book, Why Culture Matters Most, was published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Rose frequently contributes to policy debates through radio and television interviews as well as in op-eds in outlets such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Word on Business, The School Choice Advocate, Forbes, Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and The Christian Science Monitor on topics ranging from freedom of speech, social security, monetary policy, fiscal policy, judicial philosophy, education reform, and healthcare reform. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia and his B.S. from Southwest Missouri State University.

Dr. Jean Yarbrough is a professor of government and the Gary M. Pendy, Sr. Professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College. She has twice received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (N.E.H.). She is the author of American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People and Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, and editor of The Essential Jefferson. Dr. Yarbrough is also the author of numerous articles and essays in American political thought and public policy, as well as other topics in political philosophy. She recently completed a Senate-confirmed appointment to the N.E.H.’s National Council. In 2021, she was awarded the Henry Salvatori Prize for her scholarly work and public service in upholding the principles of the American Founding.

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