There are three main themes that guide my current on-going research on Spinoza:
The relations between Causation, Explanation, and Teleology (purposiveness).
The relation between finite modes and infinite modes.
The locus of (causal) agency.
These three themes are interrelated, as they all eventually involve questions about how exactly to understand substance monism in Spinoza's metaphysics.
For example, the first theme derives from the following question: does Spinza's monism imply that there is no teleological purposiveness at all in nature, because everything follows from the necessity of God's nature and there is no other legitimate form of causal explanation in Spinoza's substance monist framework?
The second theme concerns a puzzle which also comes from substance monism. If finite beings, such as our bodies, are all finite modes of God, how can God, being as "infinite" as he can possibly be, be the cause of them? Since modes are typically understood as "properties" of a substance, the thesis that an infinite substance can nevertheless generate finite "modes", i.e., finite properties, in itself seems odd. It is as though we are told that something that is defined as a being which is necessarily colourless can nevertheless bring it about by its own power that some of its local properties involve specific colours such as red, blue, or yellow. How does it make sense for finite modes to be in God?
The third theme is related to the second. If finite modes do exist in God, how should we understand our agency? Is our agency construable as some agential power that is independent from God's agency, or is it rather a part of the latter, i.e., something that is eventually reducible to God's agency? If our finite agency and God's agency can coexist for Spinoza, how should we understand their relations?
These are the questions I am hoping to be able to answer.
Regarding the first theme, a paper on Spinoza's shift in his thinking about divine teleology is published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy (https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2024.2384981) (2024).
Regarding the second theme, I discuss an aspect of it in an article in which I examine if Spinoza's monism is priority monism. This article is published in the Southern Journal of Philosophy (https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.70019) (2025).
Regarding the third theme, I have worked on it in my dissertation (https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/items/1386eb86-743a-4ac9-802e-c08a20533851) and I am currently in the process of refining my understanding to develop something close to a semi-monograph.
*If interested, please feel free to contact me for requesting the drafts. I am happy to send them over and learn from your insights.