Professor William Sweet is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University (StFX), Nova Scotia, Canada. He studied philosophy, political science, and theology, principally at l’Université d’Ottawa (Ph.D); l’Université Paris 1-Sorbonne (D.E.A.); Centre Sèvres (Paris), l’Université Saint-Paul (D.Phil.), the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the University of South Africa (D.Th.).
Professor Sweet is a Past President of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society. He currently serves as a Vice President of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (Washington), and was a member of the Steering Committee of FISP (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie) from 2003 to 2018. He is the author and/or editor of some 30 books, has taught as a Visiting Professor at universities in China, Poland, Taipei, and India, and has lectured on six continents. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2013 and of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017, and is a Membre titulaire of the Institut international de philosophie (Paris).
His research is largely in the areas of intercultural philosophy, philosophy of law, and bioethics, and has been funded by the SSHRC. He serves on the editorial board of two Indian philosophy journals and has travelled to India regularly since 1997. He headed the group responsible for having StFX join SICI, has been the SICI member representative of StFX since 2019, and has served as an adjudicator for the
Shastri Student Research in India Fellowship (SSRIF). He has also twice served as host for scholars from India through Shastri programmes.
