Istanbul 2014 Speakers:
Ferida Abidi is a Tunisian politician and member of the Ennahda party. She was a Member of the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia and the President of its Commission for Rights and Freedoms. She is a strong advocate of gender equality and was among the promoters of the article of the new Tunisian Constitution that ratifies the equality of men and women.
Asaf Savaş Akat is Professor of Economics at Istanbul Bilgi University. Previously, he served as Rector at Istanbul Bilgi University from 1996-1998. His research focuses on macroeconomic analysis of the Turkish economy and its relation to changing conditions in the global financial system, particularly after the economic crisis. He is the author of such books as İktisadi Analiz (Economic Analysis), Alternatif Büyüme Stratejisi (Alternative Growth Strategy), Sosyal Demokrasi Gündemi (Agenda for Social Democracy).
Cengiz Aktar is Senior Scholar at Istanbul Policy Center of the Sabanci University in Istanbul. He is Professor at Bahçeşehir University and head of the Department of European Union Relations. He obtained his PhD in economics from Sorbonne. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked as vice president of the intergovernmental advisory board established of the UN for migration politics of the EU. Between 1994 and 1999 he worked as the director of the UN agency of Slovenia. He has written numerous books on Europe and relations between Turkey and Europe. As a former director at the United Nations where he spent 22 years of his professional life, Aktar is one of the leading advocates of Turkey’s integration into the EU. He is a columnist for the newspaper Vatan.
Mustafa Akyol is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. He regularly writes for various international publications, including the International New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. He is a regular columnist for two Turkish newspapers, Hürriyet Daily News and Star. Recently, he published the book Islam without Extremes: a Muslim Case for Liberty.
Meysam Badamchi earned his PhD from Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome (2008- 2012), with a dissertation entitled Political Liberalism for Muslim Majority Societies. Since 2013 he is postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at Istanbul Şehir University. His areas of interest are contemporary Iranian, Turkish and Anglo-American political philosophies. He is especially interested in the works of Muslim Reformist thinkers, the liberalism of John Rawls, and ethnic minorities’ rights. He has translated Will Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy, from English into Persian (forthcoming, with collaboration of Mohhamd Mobasheri), under author’s supervision. He has a political theory weblog in Persian, called Nikomakhus. His recent publication in English is “Reasonable, Rationality, and Government: The Liberal Political Thought of Mehdi Haeri Yazdi”, forthcoming in Iranian Studies.
Julian Baggini is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Philosopher’s Magazine and the blog www.microphilosophy.net. He has authored several books about philosophy written for a general audience, including The Ego Trick, What’s It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, and the best-selling The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten. He co-authored The Shrink and The Sage with Antonia Macaro and Do you Think What You Think You Think? with Jeremy Stangroom.
Karen Barkey is Professor of Sociology and History at Columbia University and Director of Columbia’s Institute for Religion Culture and Public Life. She studies state centralization/decentralization, state control, and social movements against states in the context of empires. In her recent work she has also explored issues of toleration and accommodation in pre-modern empires. Her research focuses primarily on the Ottoman Empire, and recently on comparisons between Ottoman, Habsburg and Roman empires. Her books include Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization and Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. She also co-edited with Mark von Hagen, After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, the Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires.
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University and Director of its Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics. She was awarded the Ernst Bloch Prize in 2009. Her research includes such topics as communicative ethics, democracy and difference, identities, allegiances and affinities, and gender, citizenship and immigration. Among her recent publications are The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, The Rights of Others, Aliens, Citizens and Residents, and Another Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations, with responses by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig and Will Kymlicka. Since 2013 she is the Chair of the Scientific Committee of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations and member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Richard Bernstein is the Vera List Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the former dean of the graduate faculty at the New School. He work synthesizes and develops themes from various philosophical schools, in particular American pragmatism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Among his recent publications are Violence: Thinking Without Banisters, The Pragmatic Turn, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11, and The New Constellation: The Ethical/Political Horizons of Modernity/ Postmodernity.
Rajeev Bhargava is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. He has served as the Director of the Centre until 2013. He was formerly a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2001 and 2005, he was the Professor of Political Theory and Indian Political Thought, and the Head of the Department of Political Science at University of Delhi. His research concerns issues of Indian secularism, constitutionalism and multiculturalism. Recently, he has authored Secularism and its Critics, Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution, What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It?, and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy.
Murat Borovali is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science and Vice Rector of Istanbul Bilgi University. From 2011 to 2012, he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. His work is in political theory and the relationships between religion and politics. His writings have been included in various publications and books, including Cardazo Law Review and Boğaziçi Journal.
Giancarlo Bosetti is the Director and one of the founders of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. He is the editor-in-chief of the online journal www.resetdoc.org and of Reset, a cultural magazine he founded in 1993. He was vice-editor-in-chief of the Italian daily L’Unità. He is currently a columnist for the Italian daily La Repubblica and he has been teaching at University La Sapienza, and University Roma Tre. Among his books La lezione di questo secolo, a book-interview with Karl Popper, Cattiva maestra televisione, (ed.) writings by Karl Popper, John Condry and Pope John Paul II, Il Fallimento dei laici furiosi (2009). He recently wrote an introduction to the volume Omnia mutantur. La scoperta filosofica del pluralismo culturale (2013), writings by R. Bernstein, S. Veca, M. Ricciardi.
Cemil Boyraz is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Bilgi University. He holds a PhD in political science with a dissertation about the political economy of nationalism, analyzing the case of the post-1980 privatization process in Turkey. His research focuses on Turkish politics and foreign policy, theories of nationalism, international political economy and labor movement. His articles and reviews are published by the journal Turkish Studies. He edited book on the political participation of the youth in Turkey published in 2010. He is currently working on the relation between Islam and democracy, and political reactions to the hegemony of neoliberalism after the 1980s.
Paolo Costa is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK-ISR) in Trento, Italy. From 2009 to 2012 he chaired the Course in Religious Sciences at the Foundation. His work has focused on authors such as Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas and his research ranges from the rise of universal religions to secularization processes, from the concept of human nature and evolution to ethics. Among his books: Verso un’ontologia dell’umano. Antropologia filosofica e filosofia politica in Charles Taylor (2001), Un’idea di umanità. Etica e natura dopo Darwin (2007), La ragione e i suoi eccessi (2014).
Markus Dressler is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Bayreuth University, Germany. From 2009 to 2013 he was Associate Professor at the Istanbul Technical University. His work concerns political thought, political sociology, politics of religion and secularism with a focus on Turkey. His recent publications include Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam, Die alevitische Religion. Traditionslinien und Neubestimmungen. He has co-edited the volumes Secularism and Religion-Making (2011) and Sufis in Western Society (2009).
Khaled M. Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law and the Chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and Islam, and is a prominent scholar in the field of human rights. He was previously appointed to serve on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, and has served as a member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch. His recent publications include The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books, and Islam and the Challenge of Democracy.
Alessandro Ferrara is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and is the former President of the Italian Association of Political Philosophy. Over the past few years, he has investigated the sources and justifications of normativity after the linguistic turn and has worked at outlining an authentic view of validity as well as a judgment view of justice in the domain of political philosophy. He is the author of Modernity and Authenticity, Reflective Authenticity, Justice and Judgement, and The Force of the Example. His most recent book is The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism (2014, Cambridge UP). He is a member of Reset-Dialogues and the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Maurizio Ferraris is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Turin, where he also runs the CTAO (Inter-University Centre for Theoretical and Applied Ontology) and the LabOnt (Laboratory for Ontology). He works chiefly in the fields of hermeneutics, aesthetics, and ontology. He is the author of the Manifesto of New Realism, an emerging school of Italian philosophy that is associated with speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. Recently, he has published Realismo positivo, Filosofia globalizzata, Bentornata realtà, and Lasciar tracce: documentalità e architettura.
Patrizio Fondi is the Italian Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. From 2008 to 2013 has served as the Diplomatic Advisor of the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities of Italy, after serving as the Deputy Permanent Representative to UNESCO in Paris, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Italy in Stockholm and Head of Office, Directorate General for Cultural Promotion andd Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was decorated Official Knight of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy (2004) and to the Order of the Polar Star of the Kingdom of Sweden (2008).
Nina zu Fürstenberg is the founder and the Chair of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. She has been focusing for years on the study of Islam and on the promotion of intercultural dialogue, working as a journalist for the cultural magazine Reset. She edited Euro-Islam. L’integrazione mancata by Bassam Tibi, Lumi dell’Islam. Nove intellettuali musulmani parlano di libertà and Europa laica e puzzle religioso with Krzysztof Michalski. She is the author of Chi ha paura di Tariq Ramadan. L’Europa di fronte al riformismo islamico (German version 2008) and edited recently a book of Nasr Abu Zayd on Testo sacro e libertà. Per una lettura critica del Corano.
Nilüfer Göle is Directrice d’études at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Centre d’Analyse et d’Intervention Sociologiques (CADIS), in Paris. She is the Director of the Europublicislam Project of the European Research Council. From 1986 to 2001, she was a professor of Sociology at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Her research focuses on the Public Sphere, Islam, Gender, Secularism and Multiple Modernities. She is considered a leading authority on the political movement of today’s educated, urbanized, religious Muslim women. Göle is the author of Interpénétrations: L’Islam et l’Europe and The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling and Seküler ve Dinsel: Asinan Sinirlar (2012). She is a member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Nouzha Guessous is a researcher and consultant in human rights and bioethics. Previously, she was the Professor of Medical Biology at the Faculty of Medicine of Casablanca. She was president of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO and participated in the Royal Consultative Commission for the reform of the Mudawana. She has contributed to various international publications including the Economist
Mohammed Hashas received his PhD on “The Idea of European Islam” at LUISS University in Rome in 2013. He holds an MA in Area Studies from Oujda University in Morocco, and an MA in European Studies from LUISS. Hashas has been a research fellow at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Copenhagen University in Denmark. His main interests are contemporary reformist Islamic thought and Arab world politics. He is author of a monograph entitled Immigration and EU Integration Policies (2010) and of following articles: “Reading Abdennour Bidar: New Pathways for European Islamic Thought” (Journal of Muslims in Europe, 2013); “Understanding Tariq Ramadan” (2013); “Taha Abderrahmane as a Political Philosopher: the Concept of the Awakened Youth and the Arab Spring” (2013). Hashas has also written numerous articles on the Arab Spring published by Reset DOC and aljazeeratalk.net.
Syafiq Hasyim is a writer and a co-founder of the Rahima Foundation, Jakarta. From 2003-9, he was the deputy director of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism in Jakarta. His work focuses on issues of gender and women’s rights within the Islamic world, particularly in Indonesia. Recent writings include Menakar Harga Perempuan: Eksplorasi Lanjut atas Islam dan Hak-hak Reproduksi Perempuan (Weighing Women’s `Price’: Further Exploration of Islam and Women’s Reproductive Rights), Kekerasan dalam Rumah Tangga (Domestic Violence). He has also published the English-language book Understanding Women in Islam: An Indonesian Perspective.
Amr Hamzawy is an Egyptian political scientist. He is currently a professor at the public policy and administration department at American University in Cairo and a professor of political science at Cairo University. He previously taught at the Free University of Berlin. In addition, Hamzawy is a member of the National Council of Human Rights in Egypt, and the founder and secretary general of Freedom Egypt Party. He was elected to the Egyptian parliament in 2012. He chiefly researches processes of democratization and reform, as well as the role of religion in Arab world politics. His books include Civil Society in the Middle East, Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices (coauthored with Anthony Chase), Getting to Pluralism: Political Actors in the Arab World (coauthored with Marina Ottaway), Between Religion and Politics (co-written with Nathan Brown), The Arab Future: Contemporary Debates on Democracy, Political Islam, and Resistance.
Engseng Ho is the Professor of Cultural Anthropology and History at the Duke University Islamic Studies Center. His research foci include global transnational history, race and ethnicity, and comparative colonial studies. Ho is the author of The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian philosopher, is the York-Noor Visiting Chair in Islamic Studies at York University and has previously been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He taught at the University of Toronto and at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. In 2009, he won the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain. Jahanbegloo works to promote inter-cultural dialogue and advocates for non-violence. In April 2006 Dr. Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran Airport charged with preparing a velvet revolution in Iran and was placed in solitary confinement for four months. His works include Talking Architecture: Raj Rewal In Conversation With Ramin Jahanbegloo, The Clash of Intolerances, Talking India: Conversations with Ashis Nandy, and Iran: Between Tradition and Modernit and, in Italian, Leggere Gandhi a Teheran (I libri di Reset).
Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi has been an assistant professor in Izmir University, Turkey, since March 2011. She holds a Phd in Political Theory from Luiss University in Rome, Italy. Her main area of research and teaching is political theory. Her research interests are contemporary political theory, political liberalism, multiculturalism, pluralism, theories of toleration and the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She published articles in peer reviewed journals on John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and the concept of toleration. She is the author of the book The Tension Between Action and Revolution in Arendt’s Thought: A Critical Assessment.
Volker Kaul is Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Salerno and fellow at the Center for Ethics and Global Politics at Luiss University in Rome. His work focuses on the source of the emotional reactions we have with regard to ourselves and on a theory of personal identity more in general. He has written on child soldiers, diamond traders, suicide bombers and fundamentalists. Together with Alessandro Ferrara and David Rasmussen he edited the special issues of Philosophy & Social Criticism on the Reset-Dialogues Istanbul Seminars 2008-2013. He is secretary of the Executive Committee and scientific coordinator of the Istanbul Seminars.
Ferda Keskin is Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Istanbul Bilgi University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and taught at Boğazici University from 1994 to 2002. His research and interest areas include Foucault, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of social sciences and philosophy and literature. Ferda Keskin is the editor and co-translator of a 6-volume translation series from Foucault’s Dits et écrits into Turkish with an introduction for each volume. He is the co-editor of Pera Peras Poros: Espacement et temporalisation de l’étranger. Atelier avec et autour de Jacques Derrida. He is member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Fuat Keyman is the Director of Istanbul Policy Center and Professor of International Relations at Sabanci University in Istanbul. His work focuses mainly on the theories of globalization and the notion of citizenship. He also studies the place of Turkey in world politics as well as the problems and the future of Turkey. He is a weekly contributor to Radikal. He is the author of Transforming Turkey in a Globalizing World; Democratization, Globalization (Upcoming), Competing Nationalism in Turkey (2010), Turkey in a Globalizing World (2010), Remaking Turkey, Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (2008), Turkish Politics in a Changing World (2007) and Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (2005).
Jonathan Laurence, Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College, researches and writes about European politics, transatlantic relations and Islam in the West. Currently on sabbatical from Boston College, he is a guest researcher of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington, DC) and Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York City).He was the Daimler Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in Fall 2012. Laurence is the author of The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims (2012) and the co-author of Integrating Islam (2006).
Karuna Mantena is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She is the co-director of the International Conference for the Study of Political Thought. Her research interests include modern political thought, modern social theory, the theory and history of empire, and South Asian politics and history. She is the author of Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Recently, she has focused on political realism and the political thought of M.K. Gandhi.
Avishai Margalit is the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the 2012 recipient of the Ernst Bloch Prize and the 2007 recipient of the EMET Prize. He is well-known for his work regarding the contemporary human condition, the moral issues of our time, and current problems facing Western societies. His writings include Idolatry (with Moshe Halbertal), The Decent Society, the Ethics of Memory, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (with Ian Buruma), and On Compromise and Rotten Compromises.
Alberto Melloni is Professor of History of Christianity at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, holder of the Unesco Chair for Religious Pluralism and Peace, and Director of the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII for Religious Studies in Bologna. He is a church historian and well-known for his work on the Second Vatican Council. Recent writings include Le cinque perle di Giovanni Paolo II, Papa Giovanni: Un cristiano e il suo concilio, La storia che giudica la storia che assolve, saggi di O. Marquard e A. Melloni, and L’inizio di papa Ratzinger. Lezioni sul conclave del 2005 e sull’incipit del pontificato di Benedetto XVI.
Lea Nocera, Ph.D, is Research Assistant of Turkish Studies at University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. Her areas of research include: social and cultural history of Turkey, gender studies and social movements. She authored La Turchia contemporanea. Dalla repubblica kemalista al governo dell’Akp (Carocci, 2011), Cercasi mani piccole e abili. La migrazione turca in Germania occidentale (Isis Press, 2012), co-author of #Gezipark. Coordinate di una rivolta (Alegre, 2013) and author of several articles and essays published on international academic reviews. As an expert of contemporary Turkey she has appeared on information networks and collaborated with several Italian newspapers and magazines. She also works as translator and audiodocumentarist on topics concerning Turkey.
Ilay Örs Romain is the Vice Rector of Bilgi University, the Dean of Graduate School of Social Sciences and a faculty member at the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. She earned her PhD at Harvard University in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies. While her ethnographic work centers on the Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul in Greece (Rum Polites), her broader research interests and publication topics include minorities, migration, cosmopolitanism, pluralizing modernities, consumption, regional and urban studies in Istanbul, Greece and the Mediterranean.
Ulrich K. Preuß is Professor Emeritus at the Hertie School of Governance, Germany, where he taught Theories of the State. He worked as Professor for Public Law at the University of Bremen from 1972 to 1996. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of Public Law and Politics at Freie Universität Berlin. He has taught (among others) at Princeton University, New School University, and the University of Chicago. In 1989-90, he co-authored the draft of the constitution of the Round Table of the German Democratic Republic and advised the Thuringian parliament on the conception of a new constitution in 1992-93. He is the author of Krieg, Verbrechen, Blasphemie. Über die Zukunft globaler Nachbarschaft, Die Zukunft der europäischen Demokratie, and Bedingungen globaler Gerechtigkeit, among other titles.
David Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. His fields of interest are contemporary continental philosophy, social and political philosophy. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Social Criticism. His books include: Reading Habermas; Universalism vs. Communitarianism in Ethics; Handbook of Critical Theory;Jürgen Habermas: The Foundations of the Habermas Project; Jürgen Habermas: Law and Politics; Jürgen Habermas: Ethics; Jürgen Habermas: Epistemology and Truth; Critical Theory Vol. I-IV. He is a member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Remzi Sanver is the Rector of the Istanbul Bilgi University, where he also is a Professor at the Murat Sertel Center for Advanced Economic Studies. His research foci include game theory, social choice, and economic design. He is the recepient of numerous awards, most recently the Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young Scientist Award in 2007. Sanver is the author of Handbook on Approval Voting.
Saskia Schäfer is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Southeast Asian Studies at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University. Her research has focused on contemporary public discourses on religious liberty, deviance, Islam and politics in Indonesia and Malaysia, discourse and media analysis, religious and political authority, secularism, public morality, and Islamic feminism. Schäfer currently has two book chapters awaiting publication: “Gender, Justice and Rights: The Malaysian Case” (with Julian C.H. Lee) in Globalization and Social Transformation in the Asia Pacific: The Australian and Malaysian Experience, edited by Claudia Tazreiter and Tham Siew Yean with Palgrave Macmillan, and “Anti-Feminist Discourses and Islam in Malaysia” (with Frederik Holst) in Women’s Movements and Counter Movements: the Quest for Gender Equality in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, edited by Claudia Derichs.
Sara Silvestri is a research associate at Cambridge University and the Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City University London. She has directed the Islam in Europe programme at the European Policy Centre (Brussels) and has been a research consultant to the British Council, Ethnobarometer, the European Commission, and the British Government. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on Islam, political mobilization, and transnational networks; the emergence of Muslim institutions and pressure groups in Europe; Political Islam; Muslim-government relations and European public policies towards religion; the nexus immigration-integration-social exclusion; and the debate on ‘radical’ versus ‘moderate’ Islam. Recently, she has published chapters in several books, including Religion in Public Spaces, Perceptions of Islam in Europe, and Muslims in 21st century Europe.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She is considered one of the most influential contemporary literary theorists and a foundational thinker for postcolonial and subaltern studies. Her scholarship ranges from critiques of post-colonial discourse to feminism, Marxism, and globalization and has had profound effects on both academic thought and political action. She is well-known for her translation of Jacques Derrida’s De la grammatologie and her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak has recently published An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Other Asias, and Death of Discipline.
Roberto Toscano, former Italian Ambassador to Iran (2003-2008) and India (2008-2010) is today Senior Research Associate at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs- CIDOB and a columnist for the Italian daily La Stampa, as well as President of the Intercultura Foundation. He is the author of several books and articles published in Italy, Spain, the US and India. Amongst his recent books: Between terrorism and global governance: essays on ethics, violence and international law (2009), Beyond Violence. Principles for an Open Century (with R. Jahanbegloo, 2009) and La violenza, le regole (2006). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of Reset-Dialogues.
Ömer Turan is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Bilgi University. His research interests include socio-political theory, Turkish politics, and historical sociology. His writings have been published in numerous volumes, including Dialogue and ‘Dignity of Difference’: Building Capacity for Otherness, edited by Mojtaba Mahdavi and W. Andy Knight, and Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy edited by Fuat Keyman.
Please check our website regularly for updates concerning the speakers and the program.