Biography-Berlin

Karen was a research fellow at the Center in Berlin during its first year in 2018. Her work at the center focused on German Idealism and Critical Theory, and in particular, on rethinking Marxian concepts such as species-being, alienation, and ideology for present times. While at the Center, she participated in the International Conference on Emancipation marking the 50th anniversary of May ’68, and was also an instructor at the Critical Theory Summer School on Rethinking Ideology. Karen is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and has just completed a book on Hegel, which argues for the systematic importance of the concept of life for his philosophy, focusing in particular on the Science of Logic.

Eva von Redecker is a Critical Theorist and Feminist Philosopher. She has won Marie-Skłodoska-Curie funding for a project on the authoritarian personality (PhantomAiD), the project will be hosted by the University of Verona, Italy.
She was deputy director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change in Berlin until October 2019 and was a postdoc researcher in Rahel Jaeggi’s social philosophy group.

https://www.evredecker.net

Her new book Praxis and Revolution (prepared to appear in English translation under the title of Refiguring Revolution) uses social theory and rich literary examples to explain how radical social change can work despite the rigidity of given structures. According to Praxis and Revolution, revolutions are always processual: they draw from social interstices which prefigure new paradigmatic practices. At the same time, revolutions are materially conditioned: they rely on enabling structural conjectures which allow for transformative transfers to occur. Eva’s current research focusses on the notion of propertization in order to understand the way in which modern forms of domination and destructiveness hinge on the logics of ownership. Her previous work also touches on questions of social psychology, sexuality and normativity; she has authored a comprehensive introduction to the work of Judith Butler as well as a monograph on Hannah Arendt’s moral philosophy.

As an essayist, Eva regularly publishes travel writing which provides some background-reflection on academic journeys and habits.

Internationally renowned Philosopher and political scientist Seyla Benhabib works on the socio-political history of ideas as well as Feminist and Critical Theory. In her book The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens, she argues for a moral universalism and advocates porous borders. Her voice is often heard in the context of current political events, as, for instance, regarding the migration movements of 2015. Seyla Benhabib has been a visiting professor and fellow at a number of institutions, among them the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and the NYU Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice. She is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University.

Political scientist Zeynep Gambetti’s work focuses on contemporary political theory, ethics, social movements, and public space. She has written extensively on Hannah Arendt; her work includes research on matters of subjectivity, violence in the neoliberal system, and the decolonization of urban spaces. Space as a vector of relationality plays a signifi cant role in her work on the transformation of the conflict with the Kurdish movement. Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of political theory at Boğaziçi University. She is currently engaged in writing a book on labor, action and ethics through the perspective of Arendt, Marx and Deleuze.