Surrounded by candles and pictures of France, new Biola professor Kristen Irwin has made her Sutherland office feel like home since she arrived in August. Upstairs in the philosophy department, she thrives in the environment of philosophy and Torrey program students and professors.
“There are always big ideas floating around; I love that,” Irwin said. “I love thinking and talking about big ideas. There’s a lot of really good intellectual energy in this building, and I really appreciate that.”
Irwin was born in Charleston, South Carolina and throughout her life has moved to Virginia, Connecticut, Michigan, France, Arizona, and to California several times. Before coming to Biola, Irwin lived in Arizona for a month after marrying her husband Dave in July.
She enjoys exercising, running in particular, participating in triathlons and combination of Pilates and yoga.
“It was a nice way of kind of balancing out the running and swimming and biking with kind of like injury prevention to keep you from kind of overtraining,” she said of her Pilates/yoga class at the University of California San Diego when she attended as a graduate student. “And it’s also just really relaxing.”
Irwin graduated from Hillsdale College in Michigan with her bachelor’s as a double major in history and philosophy with a minor in French. Irwin has lived in France twice, once as a foreign exchange student and once in college to do research for her dissertation on Pierre Bayle, a 17th century French philosopher.
“The dissertation is a very long and difficult process and at least for me, I do see it as part of my witness to the UCSD department so I would really like it to be an excellent witness,” she said.
Irwin attended UCSD for its philosophy doctorate program right after earning her bachelor’s and plans to defend her dissertation this November.
While there, she taught philosophy courses for undergraduate students. Irwin found teaching in a secular environment to be somewhat frustrating.
“It felt kind of constraining to have to stop your inquiry, to stop a classroom discussion in this really artificial kind of way,” she said. “I feel like it impedes a full engagement of the text, it impedes a full engagement of all of the issues that are under discussion.”
At Biola, Irwin said she appreciates the openness and intellectual freedom allowed in the classroom.
“One of the things that I like about Biola that was unique is that as you’re wrestling with the deep issues in the text, you don’t have to stop at this wall, this, like, artificial wall between the secular and the spiritual,” she said.
Irwin is currently teaching three sections of Introduction to Philosophy and part of philosophy seminar with other philosophy professors. While Irwin likes reading the works of specific philosophers, she teaches her students about a different set of thinkers.
“The people that I like reading are kind of like, edgy and not necessarily people that I agree with, but they’re very thought-provoking. But, the people I like teaching are more straight forward and practical,” she said.
Her interest in philosophy and history is focused primarily on 20th century Europe and the thinkers of that time.
“I think that the way that ideas developed in Europe in the 20th century has a lot to do with the historical events that happened in Europe in the 20th century,” Irwin said. She noted that the history of philosophy has much to teach because it illustrates that the ideas modern philosophers mull over have already been thought about by past philosophers.
“Some of the ideas that are bouncing around academia and America actually have their roots in 20th century Europe, so it behooves us to be able to make sense of that era,” she said.
The pictures of France on her office wall serve as a testimony to her interest in European ideas, and the candles on her desk exemplify proof of her enjoyment of thought and contemplation. After only half a semester, Biola has become home for this new professor.
