Dr. Shields graduated with a degree in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in southern California, and then attended the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC where he earned an M.A/Ph.L and a Ph.D. He taught as Visiting Faculty at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and then as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical College Josephinum, a seminary in Ohio. His specialties are the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and medieval philosophy more generally, as well as moral philosophy, the philosophy of nature, and the history of science.

Dr. Shields has published articles on the thought of St. Thomas in The Thomist and the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and his book Nature and Nature’s God: The Scientific and Philosophical Validity of Aquinas’ Unmoved Mover Proof is forthcoming from the Catholic University of America Press. Dr. Shields loves God, church, his family and friends, and the beauty of God’s creation.