Biographies

Simon Thornton 1024 731 Tom Carlson

Simon Thornton

Postdoctoral Scholar, Santa Barbara

2018-2020

Email: simonalexanderthornton@gmail.com

Simon Thornton

Simon Thornton received his BA in Politics and Eastern European Studies at University College, London, where he specialized in Russian and post-Soviet culture and politics. After spending two years working for an NGO in the Republic of Armenia his interests became decidedly more theoretical, and he returned to his hometown to complete an M.A. in political theory at the University of Sheffield. Simon then completed his Ph.D. research at the University of Essex, where he focused on the moral phenomenology of the Danish thinker K.E. Løgstrup. At the Humanities and Social Change Center, Simon is currently working on a project which brings together the insights concerning human powerlessness and finitude found in the work of Løgstrup, Kierkegaard and others with a view to understanding and addressing contemporary social change. So far, he has produced draft papers on Løgstrup’s theory of expressions of life and on Kierkegaard’s theories of tragedy and guilt. Currently, he is working on a paper comparing Løgstrup and Kierkegaard tentatively entitled ‘Receiving Life as a Gift: On Løgstrup’s Dispute with Kierkegaard.’

Luigi Doria 150 150 Barbara Del Mercato

Luigi Doria

Research Fellow, Venice Center

Project: The Nature of Money and its Social Perception in Times of Crisis – Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, tutor: prof. Francesca Coin)

2018-2021

Email: luigi.doria@unive.it

Luigi Doria

Luigi Doria is a fixed-term researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and a fellow of the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari, where he investigates the nature of money and its social perception in times of crisis from the perspective of economic sociology. He graduated in Economics (Economia Politica) from Bocconi University, Milan. He earned his Ph.D. in Regional Planning and Public Policy (Pianificazione Territoriale e Politiche Pubbliche del Territorio) from the University IUAV of Venice. Some of his past activities: he carried out research at the University IUAV of Venice and at Bocconi University, Milan; he was fixed-term researcher of CNRS at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS-EHESS-ENS), Paris; he carried out teaching activies (as a docente a contratto) at Bocconi University and at the University of Calabria; he taught a course, as a visiting faculty member, at the International University College of Turin. He was a fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study.

Related Links

Igiaba Scego 150 150 Barbara Del Mercato

Igiaba Scego

Igiaba Scego

Post-Doc Fellow, Venice Center

Project: “Afrodescendants” in Post- World War II Italy: Experiences and Representations (1944-1979) (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici – Department of Humanities, tutor: prof. Ricciarda Ricorda)

2017-2019

Igiaba Scego

Igiaba Scego is a writer and a post-Doc researcher of the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. During her first year in Venice she focused on Italian colonialism and blackness in Italy. Scego examined colonialism and masculinity in the light of how culture functions, and what it means. Together with the other Fellows, she is also involved in the Center’s overarching theme of cultural pluralism.
She took part in several events organized by Ca’ Foscari University, such as the literary festival Incroci di Civiltà, where she interviewed the great African writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In april 2018 she was actively involved in the Afropean Bridges symposium, the first in a series of international workshops that are going to take place in Venice on Africa-EU relationships and on African-European identity, within the framework of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent.
In her capacity as a writer, in 20017-2018 Scego wrote two short stories based on her research (one of them is about to be published in Italy, the other in Germany), and edited an anthology for children about refugees (Italian publication due in November 2018).

Laura Calvaresi 150 150 Nina Rismal

Laura Calvaresi

Ph.D. Student, Venice Center

Project: Tra profitto ed Industria: traduzioni di termini economici e percorsi di ricezione sociale del De Regimine Principum di Egidio Romano nel medioevo (XIII-XV secolo), (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici – Department of Humanities, tutor: Antonio Montefusco)

2017-2020

Email: laura.calvaresi@unive.it

Laura Calvaresi

Laura Calvaresi is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Departement of Humanities, tutor: Antonio Montefusco) and a Fellow of the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari. Her reaserch project–Building a language, rethinking an ethic: virtues of the Christian Merchant between liberalitas and industria (1250-1350)–is at the crossroads between Italian Literature and Medieval History, dealing with Political Economy in Medieval Literature. Laura’s focus is on the relevant expressions and linguistic syntagmata (compositions) in both Latin and vernacular European languages which represent the merchants’ world of values between 1250 and 1350. Her research also participates in a broader project called Political Economy of Medieval Literature. The formation of economic categories in Medieval European Literature (XII- XV centuries). Her training started at the University of Macerata where she studied Medieval History.

W. Ezekiel Goggin 150 150 Nina Rismal

W. Ezekiel Goggin

Dissertation Fellow, Santa Barbara Center

2017/18

W. Ezekiel Goggin

Ezekiel Goggin was a dissertation fellow during the inaugural year of the International Center for the Humanities and Social Change at the University of Santa Barbara (2017-2018).  During his time at UCSB, Goggin worked on issues pertaining to the rhetorical use of “fake news,” the relationship of media and mediation to the formation of publics, and the psychology of self-deception. Goggin also took part in the 2018 Summer Institute of the Humanities and Social Change Foundation at Universitá Ca’ Foscari, Venice, where he presented an essay entitled “The Limits of Conviction: Hegel and Weber on the Possibilities of Modern Community.” During his time as a fellow he completed a draft of his dissertation the theme of sacrifice in the philosophy of GWF Hegel. Broadly speaking, Goggin’s research focuses on the relationship between religious imagination and modern accounts of human freedom –particularly at the intersection of German idealism, phenomenology, and theology.  He is also interested in deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and critical theory.  His work has been supported by the University of Chicago Divinity School, the Udo-Keller-Stiftung Forum Humanum, and the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Jan Dutkiewicz 150 150 Nina Rismal

Jan Dutkiewicz

Dissertation Fellow, Santa Barbara Center

2017/18

Jan Dutkiewicz

Jan was a dissertation fellow at the Center in Santa Barbara in 2017/18. As a Fellow, he completed and defended his dissertation and earned a Ph.D. in Politics from the New School for Social Research. Jan is a political economist whose research focuses on the relationship between corporate capitalism, political power, and public debates about ethics and values. His current book project traces how the American meat industry seeks to produce an animal that best suits market conditions – as biological animal, financial security, object of social imagination, and subject of political contestation – from conception through consumption. This work sheds light on the tensions and interrelations between market valuation, the value of life itself, and social values in the late-liberal, not-quite-post-industrial United States. Jan’s research has been supported by a Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), an Ira Katznelson Dissertation Fellowship from the New School for Social Research, a Human-Animal Studies Fellowship at Wesleyan University, and a Graduate Student Fellowship at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

Publications

“Transparency and the Factory Farm.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies. 18(2): 19-32, 2018.

“Heightening the Contradictions and Missing the Point: What Cass Sunstein Gets Wrong About Marxism, Sanders, and American Politics.” Public Seminar. October 31, 2017.

Related Links

Pierre Fasula 150 150 Nina Rismal

Pierre Fasula

Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa Barbara Center

2017/2018

Pierre Fasula

Pierre was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center in Santa Barbara during its first year in 2017/2018, and at the same time a lecturer at UCSB in the departments of philosophy, comparative literature, and religious studies. His work at Santa Barbara was part of a collaborative project which investigated questions related to the concepts of facts, values, and truth, and particularly the value and nature of factual knowledge amid the recent debates of ‘fake news’. He considered this issue through philosophy of literature, more specifically detective and spy novels, as these genres show the value and nature of the establishing of truth, and its difficulties. One result of this research is a broader account of fake news and conspiracy theories, based on a study of resentment. Pierre is back now at the University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, as a research fellow, where he investigates the affective and social roots of our relation to truth.

Karen Ng 150 150 Nina Rismal

Karen Ng

Fellow, Berlin Center

Spring 2018

Karen Ng

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 150 150 Nina Rismal

Eva von Redecker

former Deputy Director, Berlin Center

Email: evakatharina.vonredecker@univr.it

Eva von Redecker

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.

Seyla Benhabib 150 150 Nina Rismal

Seyla Benhabib

Dummy Image

Fellow, Berlin Center

Autumn 2018

Email:

Seyla Benhabib

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.