Rosalyn Diprose

Rosalyn Diprose is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at University of New South Wales.

Engagement with her published research in Philosophy (sub categories (Comparative) Literature and Gender Studies) has placed her on Stanford University's "World Top 2% of Scientists" list for the years 2025, 2022, and 2021. Diprose is best known for the interdisciplinary application of her unique concept of "corporeal generosity" developed through engagement with existential phenomenology (particularly Merleau-Ponty and Levinas), the Continental philosophies of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Arendt, and numerous feminist philosophies of embodiment. She has been recognised for her contributions to scholarship on these philosophers. Her concept of "corporeal generosity" is now considered to be seminal in the emerging field of Critical Phenomenology.

Biography and Career

Diprose was raised on a family farm in mid-Western NSW (on "unceded" Wiradjuri country). After graduating with a degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Technology Sydney in 1976, she worked for 2 years in pharmacology research in Sydney and 3 years for Top Deck Travel in London and Sydney in administrative and managerial roles, before undertaking a liberal Arts degree in Philosophy and History at The University of Sydney (1982-1986). She completed a PhD in Philosophy at UNSW Sydney under the supervision of Prof.Genevieve Lloyd (1987-1991). Her dissertation is entitled: "Ethics and the Body of Woman: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger".

Diprose was the first woman appointed as a full-time lecturer in Philosophy at Flinders University of South Australia (1991-1994), before taking up a tenured position in the School of Philosophy at UNSW Sydney in 1994. During her academic career she has also held fully funded visiting professorships at several institutions, including in the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University, South Africa in 2002, in Human Geography, the Open University UK in 2006; and the Humanities Institute at SUNY Buffalo USA in 2014. She held the posts of Deputy Head of School and Research Coordinator for the School of History and Philosophy at UNSW (2009-2012). Diprose was awarded the "UNSW Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching for Postgraduate Supervision" in 2009 and went on to oversee 20 successful PhD completions as primary supervisor in 15 years 1998-2014.

Development of "Corporeal Generosity" as an Ontological Concept and a Basis for Ethics