SPEAKERS

[in order of appearance]

 

 

William Milberg

 

William Milberg is the Dean of the New School for Social Research and Professor of Economics. William Milberg’s research is in two distinct areas of economics.  The first is the consequences of economic globalization for income distribution and economic insecurity.  Milberg studies how the globalization of production (expanded trade and investment) has impacted profits, wages, investment, financialization and economic growth.  His recent research focuses on the U.S. experience, but he has done considerable comparative analysis across OECD countries.  The emphasis on global value chains has led to a series of studies of the distribution of value added within developing countries as a result of the corporate strategy shift towards globalized production among lead, developed country firms.The second area of research in the history and methodology of economics.  Milberg studies the role of pragmatism in 20th and 21st century American economic thought and how this tradition has influenced scientific methods in economics.

 

 

John VanderLippe

 

John VanderLippe is an Associate Professor at the New School. He studies the history of the modern Middle East. His scholarship and teaching focuses primarily on the history of the Turkish Republic, and more broadly on the modern Middle East and on relations between the states of the Middle East and the West since World War I. He is  particularly concerned with the role of imagery and stereotypes in the making of international relations, and with the role of culture in politics and political discourse, as reflected in the debates among agents of the state, intellectuals and the people over changing terms of legitimization, institutions, sense of belonging and construction of the future.

 

 

 

Sırrı Süreyya Önder

 

Turkish film director, actor, screenwriter, columnist and politician. Elected into the parliament in 2011 as an independent representing the district where Gezi Park is located.  He later joined the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Sırrı Süreyya Önder was involved in the 2013 Taksim Gezi Park protests and was reportedly hospitalised after being hit by a tear gas cartridge.

 

 

 

Abdullah Demirbaş

 

Abdullah Demirbaş is mayor of the municipality of Sur in the city of Diyarbakir, Southeast Turkey, and a member of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). He holds a degree in sociology and was a teacher of philosophy from 1987 to 2007. He was first elected as Mayor of Sur in 2004, and he made a commitment to his electorate to serve them in their own languages a campaigner for minority languages. In 2007, he was removed from his functions, together with the entire municipal council, for using the Kurdish language in official business. In the local elections of 2009, he was re-elected with a stronger majority. However, the prosecutions against him continued and in May 2009 he was sentenced to 2 years in jail for language crimes. In 2009 he was detained as part of a widespread crackdown against Kurdish politicians and organizations.

 

 

 

Mehmet Yüksel

 

Mehmet Yüksel is representative of Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Washington DC in the USA and was the former representative of the party in United Kingdom. He is also a member of Foreign Affairs Commission of Peace and Democracy Party. Mehmet Yüksel has been a facilitator of diplomatic relations to inform communities, national officials, and national and international organizations about the socio-political issues of the Kurdish people in Turkey and the Peace and Democracy Party. The current negotiations among Kurdish representatives and the Turkish government is one of the major achievements of the international campaigns on which his efforts has focused.

 

 

 

Zeynep Türkyılmaz

 

Zeynep Türkyılmaz is the assistant professor of history at Dartmouth College and studies the Middle East, especially the Ottoman empire. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009.  Her dissertation, "Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire," is based on intensive research conducted in Ottoman, British, and several American missionary archives. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral at UNC-Chapel Hill between 2009-2010 and Europe in the Middle East/ The Middle East in Europe Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin between 2010-2011. She joined the Dartmouth College as an assistant professor of history in 2011. Her research and teaching interests include state-formation, gender, nationalism, religion with a focus on heterodoxy and missionary work in the Middle East from 1800 to the present.

 

 

 

Kerem Gülay

 

Kerem Gulay is a JSD candidate and Fulbright Scholar at Cornell Law School. He received his LL.B. (magna cum laude) from Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. Kerem obtained his LL.M. (Adv.) in International Law with an International Criminal Law specialization from Leiden University. Following his graduation from Leiden University, he clerked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. Prior to joining the J.S.D. program, he practiced law in Turkey. Kerem Gulay's teaching and research interests include intersections of international & comparative law and legal theory. He focuses on the international law claims of non-state actors in human rights activism and in investment cases. His dissertation, which seeks avenues for discursive resistance in international tribunals, is tentatively titled “Cosmopolitan Principles in International Dispute Settlement: A Transgression of [State] Consent?”

 

 

 

Vesna Jaksic Lowe, MS

 

 

Vesna Jaksic Lowe leads Physicians for Human Right’s work with the media and works with journalists globally. Prior to joining PHR, Jaksic Lowe was a media strategist at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she focused her communications work on immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and voting rights. Jaksic Lowe has also served as a faculty advisor for communications and diplomacy delegations of the International Scholar Laureate Program in Australia, China, and South Africa. In winter 2013, she completed the Worldview Institute, an executive training program held by the United Nations Association of New York. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she has an MS in international affairs from the New School and a BA in communications from Hofstra University. Finally, Jaksic Lowe contributed to PHR's latest report on the use of unnecessary force and the excessive use of tear gas during Gezi Park demonstrations.

 

 

 

Jeanne Mirer

 

Jeanne Mirer has been a member of the IADL bureau since 1996. Prior to being President of IADL she served as Secretary General and Treasurer. She has been an active member of IADL affiliate the National Lawyers Guild for 40 years and has held numerous positons in the NLG. She currently serves as a co-chair of the NLG International Committee. She is in the private practice of law specializing in employment and labor rights.

 

 

 

M. Arda Beskardes

 

M. Arda Beskardes is an attorney based in New York City. He specializes in a wide variety of business and immigration law matters. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, NAFSA: Association of International Educators, and the American Bar Associationʼs Sections of International Law and Practice and Business Law. Arda is licensed to practice law in New York and Tennessee. Arda also serves as a Supervising Attorney to The City University of New York (CUNY) system; overseeing CUNYʼs F and J related immigration policies, procedures, concerns, and other issues. An active member of NAFSA and a member of their Trainer Corps roster, Arda frequently conducts professional development workshops, lectures, and writes on immigration issues for NAFSA and other educational organizations and institutions. Arda, in addition to immigration law, is very well versed in business matters and has several years teaching experience as an adjunct professor of Business Law at The University of Memphisʼs Fogelman College of Business and Economics. Arda is a graduate of The University of Memphis's Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law (JD; 1998), and the Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences (BA; 1995) where he studied Political Science with a concentration in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations.

 

 

 

Sündüz Haşar

 

Sunduz Hasar is a dramaturg. She holds a BA from Ankara University School of Political Science, Faculty of Communication, an MA from Marmara University, and is a PhD candidate at Kocaeli University. She currently teaches at Aydin University in Drama and Art Management departments and works at Izmit Municipal Theater. She has worked as a dramaturg at State Theater from 1982 to 2003 and as a general coordinator at Kenter Theater in Istanbul. She was an advisory board member of the well known Flying Broom International Women's Film Festival and one of the founding members of KA-DER. She is the editorial board member of the long established Tiyatro…Tiyatro Journal and received the Ismet Kuntay Best Dramaturg Award in 2012. Her research interests include the reformation of state theaters and the autonomy of state funded theater institutions. While she was working on the neo-liberal political agendas and their effects on arts in Turkey for her PhD dissertation, Gezi Resistance broke out. She is currently working on her refocused dissertation: The Creative Practices of Resistance in Relation to Arts: Gezi Example.

 

 

 

Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş

 

Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş was born in 1973 in Leeds. He studied sociology and philosophy, translated in the fields of literature and art. In 2007, he organized the exhibition The Empire Is Still Crumbling at Karşı Sanat and participated in the exhibition Join The Dots the same year. A member of the groups Zen and Hafriyat, his drawings have also previously been published in the magazine Hayvan. As a member of the Hafriyat group, he took part in the foundation of Hafriyat Karaköy and contributed to some exhibitions organized in the space. His first solo exhibition Expecting Pleasure To Solve Problems was exhibited at Galeri Splendid in March 2009. The exhibition featured the artist’s drawings and paintings on paper and also a work composed of seventeen brass plates titled An Announcement Will Be Made Later. In 2012, with ExtraMucadele, he presented an exhibition titled They Came From Where They Came From at Non Gallery. His illustrations are poetic and raise social and political issues.

 

 

 

Ceren Erdem

 

Ceren Erdem is a curator and writer based in New York. She is the co-curator of Court Square, a Long Island City based project space devoted to supporting the production and exhibition of new work by emerging artists, writers, and curators and co-funder and editor-at-large of Interventions, a web-based journal and curatorial platform of Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies program at Columbia University where she received her MA degree. She previously worked in the Istanbul Biennial and the British Council where she initiated international programs in Turkey and wider South East Europe across different art forms and creative sectors. Erdem also holds an MFA degree in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design from Sabanci University in Istanbul.

 

 

 

Burak Arıkan

 

 

Burak Arıkan is an New York and Istanbul based artist working with complex networks. He takes the obvious social, economic, and political issues as input and runs through an abstract machinery, which generates network maps and algorithmic interfaces, results in performances, and procreates predictions to render inherent power relationships visible and discussable. Arıkan’s software, prints, installations, and performances have been featured in numerous institutions internationally; most recent appearances include: 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013), Home Works 6, Beirut (2013), 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013), 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), Nam June Paik Award Exhibition, Kunstmuseum Bochum (2012), Truth is Concrete, Graz (2012). Arikan is the founder of Graph Commons platform, dedicated to provide “network intelligence” for everyone.

 

 

 

Fulya Peker

 

Fulya Peker is a theater artist and poet. She holds a BA in Theater from H.U. Ankara State Conservatory and an MA in Theater Literature History and Criticism from Brooklyn College, CUNY. She has performed in the works by Richard Foreman, John Zorn, Object Collection, Robert Ashley, butoh master Katsura Kan and she was featured in David Michalek’s Portraits in Dramatic Time at Lincoln Center. Her recent NY credits as a writer/director include: The Plague, Requiem Aeternam Deo, The Void, The Red Book, Yellow Sound, Hands of a Suicide and Broken Umbilical Cord, Bir Olumun Kahramani. Her first book of poetry Umuda Uyanmak was published by Eko Yayinlari and her second Yuklem Kanamasi is currently under consideration. Her articles on experimental theater and her translations of Turkish poetry were also published both in Turkey and in USA (Hyperion:On the Future of Aesthetics, Tiyatro...Tiyatro). She is the co-founder of Hybrid Stage Project; founder and artistic director of Katharsis Performance Project and Modern Mythologies Project.        

 

 

 

Sebahat Tuncel

 

Sebahat Tuncel is a Kurdish politician, women’s rights advocate, former nurse and member of Parliament in Turkey. She studied Cartography and Land Surveying in Mersin University and began her political career through the Women’s Branch of the Party of People’s Democracy (HADEP) in 1998. She is currently Vice Co-chairperson and Istanbul Deputy of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which she helped to found. She has also worked with international organizations including UNDP and Amnesty International. She went on trial for membership of PKK in 2006, accused of making frequent trips to PKK camps in northern Iraq, and was subsequently imprisoned. She ran for the parliamentary elections from prison and after winning a seat in Istanbul with 93,000 votes, was released from custody in July 2007. She is the youngest woman to serve in the Turkish parliament and the first person in Turkish history to be elected to parliament from prison.

 

 

 

Cihan Tekay

 

Cihan Tekay is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center and a Graduate Teaching Fellow at John Jay College of Criminal Justice where she teaches Sex and Culture an introductory course on gender and sexuality. Her current research interests include gender and the labor movement, secularism and nationalism within the left, and the history of industrialization  in Turkey. Previously, she graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied the intersections of gender and the aesthetics of Turkish modernization, and pursued graduate level work in Sociology at Boğazici University, where she wrote a thesis titled Remembering Resistance: Memory and Meaning-Making in the 2006-7 Novamed Women's Strike. She has been active in various social movements in the US and in Turkey, including anti-racist, feminist, ecological, anticapitalist, and international solidarity work. Cihan is a contributor to the Turkish daily Radikal and to Mashallah News, and a Co-Editor of the Turkey Page at Jadaliyya.

 

 

 

Zeyno Üstün

 

Zeyno Ustun is a freelance researcher and a graduate student in the department of Sociology at New School for Social Research. She received her MA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University, where she wrote a thesis titled Desire of the Impossible; A Cultural Reading of Fantastic Cinema in which she studied contemporary fantastic cinema in order to investigate a new kind of vulnerability of the subjects in the late 20th century. During her MA studies, she worked as a research assistant and co-taught the course Social Research Methods at Bogazici University. She also coordinated a project titled A Comprehensive View of the Competitiveness of Istanbul Hotels affiliated with Boğaziçi University Scientific Research Fund and the Department of Tourism Administration. Currently, she is working with the software artist Burak Arikan as a researcher in his projects, compiling and organizing data for his artworks and creating editorial contents. Zeyno also translated several books and worked with other translators in their projects at Kaknus Publishing House. At the moment, besides her academic work, Zeyno is learning computer programming and video editing while she assists Arikan in their most recent project, Networks of Dispossession, a project inspired by the Gezi uprising and which takes a closer look at the capital relations behind Istanbul's urban transformation.

 

 

 

Bade Okçuoğlu

 

Bade Okçuoğlu has a BA in Sociology and Philosophy from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She pursued graduate-level work in Sabancı University's Cultural Studies department and is currently an MA candidate in Sociology at Boğaziçi University. Her academic work focuses on gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, posthumanism and virtual space ethnography. She has been a volunteer at Lambdaistanbul since 2010. She is also a singer-songwriter.

 

 

 

Nil Uzun

 

Nil Uzun is a Ph.D. Candidate and a Graduate Fellow in Sociology at Rutgers State University of New Jersey. She received her first MA in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University and second MA in Social Anthropology from Central European University. She did research in Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Sarajevo, Skopje and most recently in Berlin on several topics like human rights organizations, transnational networks and biomass energy. Her recent work focuses on Eurocentric reproductions of Middle Eastern subjectivities through academic knowledge production in the US and in Germany. She is currently teaching courses on contemporary theory, and social inequalities at Rutgers University.

 

 

 

Ahmet Şık

 

Ahmet Şık is a Turkish investigative journalist, author of several books and a member of Turkish Journalists’ Union and the Association of Contemporary Journalists. His book The Imam's Army led to his detention for a year in 2011-2012, and the book was seized and banned. He remains under indictment in the Odatv case of the Ergenekon trials; his cause has been taken up by English PEN.  In the interim, in an act of anti-censorship defiance, a version of the book was released in November 2011 under the name 000Kitap (000Book), edited by 125 journalists, activists and academics, and published by an independent publishing house, Postacı. He works as an independent journalist and teaches journalism classes at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

 

 

 

Nina Ognianova

 

Nina Ognianova is the Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Since becoming coordinator of the Europe and Central Asia Program in 2006, Nina Ognianova has led fact-finding and advocacy missions to Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Starting in 2007, Ognianova has organized and participated in yearly CPJ missions to Moscow and the European Union, focusing on the issue of impunity in Russian journalist killings. She is the lead author of two major CPJ special reports - Anatomy of Injustice, issued in September 2009, which exposes flaws in the official investigations of unsolved journalist murders in Russia; and Turkey's Press Freedom Crisis, issued in October 2012, which examines the anti-press campaign under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ognianova previously worked as CPJ's Europe and Central Asia researcher. Prior to joining CPJ in December 2003, Ognianova was a staff writer for the International Journalists' Network, the media-assistance website of the nonprofit International Center for Journalists in Washington, where she covered Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Ognianova earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and mass communications from the American University in Bulgaria and a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism--Columbia. Her commentaries have appeared in the Guardian of London, the International Herald Tribune, and The Huffington Post, among others. Ognianova is a native Bulgarian speaker, fluent in English and Russian.

 

 

 

Eylem Delikanlı

 

Eylem Delikanlı is a writer and correspondent for the independent daily newspaper BİRGün. Her articles focus on American politics and culture. She holds a BA in Communication from the University of Marmara and an MA in Sociology from the City University of New York focusing on sociology of communication. She worked as director of communications for various international companies such as DDB, Y&R and New York Film Academy. She is the co-author of an upcoming book Keşke Bir Öpüp Okşasaydım (Ayrıntı Yayınları, September 2013, İstanbul), a work of oral history focusing on the 1980 Coup D’Etat in Turkey and its effects on families of individuals that were targeted by the Military. As a freelance researcher, Eylem focuses on the political refugees living in Europe after the 1980 Coup D’Etat for her upcoming project as a sequel.

 

 

 

Şeyla Benhabib

 

Seyla Benhabib  is Eugene Mayer Professor of political science and Philosophy at Yale University, and was director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from 2002 to 2008, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. She is the author of several books, most notably about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Benhabib is well-known for combining critical theory with femisnist theory. She is also the recipient of the Ernst Bloch prize in 2009, which is one of Germany's most distinguished philosophical honors, for her contributions to cultural understanding in a global world. Her work has been translated into twelve different languages. Her recent books include: The Rights of Others. Aliens, Citizens and Residents (winner of the Ralph Bunche award of the American Political Science Association and the North American Society for Social Philosophy award ); Another Cosmopolitanism. Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations, with  Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig and Will Kymlicka; Mobility and Immobility. Gender, Borders and Citizenship, and  Dignity in Adversity. Human Rights in Troubled Times .

 

 

 

Ümit Akçay

 

Ümit Akçay is a Visiting Scholar in the Politics Department at New York University in New York. He is the author of  Planning of Capitalism: Transformation of Planning and the State Planning Organization in Turkey, (in Turkish, SAV Press, 2007) and Money, Bank, State: The Political Economy of the Independence of Central Bank, (in Turkish, SAV Press, 2009). His current research focuses on the state restructuring in the Middle East and the Global South as a response to the economic crisis of 2008.

 

 

 

Hasan Ertuğ Tombuş

 

H. Ertug Tombus holds a Ph.D. degree in political science from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey and currently working on constitution-making and comparative constitutions at the New School for Social Research. His primary teaching and research areas are theories of democracy, politics and law, theories of constitution-making, secularism and its critics, sociology of law, political sociology, contemporary social theory and Turkish politics. His work has appeared in journals such as Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory and Philosophy and Social Criticism. He is also managing editor of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory and Philosophy and Social Criticism.

 

E. Ahmet Tonak

 

E. Ahmet Tonak is professor of Economics at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey, holds B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in Turkey; M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from State University of New York at Stony Brook; and M.A and Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research. Dr. Tonak has taught courses in economics in various universities in the United States for 25 years such as Bard College at Simon's Rock, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, New York University, William Paterson State College, and the New School for Social Research, and taught in Turkey at the Middle East Technical University, Bosporus University and Istanbul Technical University. Dr. Tonak is the author of dozens of articles and has published several books including Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (with Anwar Shaikh); Turkey in Transition: New Perspectives (with İrvin C. Schick); and in Turkish Küreselleşme: Emperyalizm, Yerelcilik ve İşçi Sınıfı;; Kapital'in Izinde (with Nail Satligan and Sungur Savran); Kent Hakki'ndan Isyan'a. He has been also doing freelance journalism since 1972.  He has had columns for various Turkish dailies, weeklies and now writes a weekly column for Birgun.

 

Pınar Batur

 

Pınar Batur is Professor of Sociology and Director of Environmental Studies at Vassar College. She has authored several books and articles examining racism, anti-racism and political discourse. Her recent research is on Turkish environmental politics and environmental thought, especially  the relationship between knowledge and policy-making, and the meaning of risk in Turkey in the twenty-first century. Her recent work includes “The Sea Connects it All: Yaman Koray’s Deep Ecology and Turkish Environmental Thought.”

 

 

Esra Akcan

 

Esra Akcan is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her architecture degree at the Middle East Technical University, and her Ph.D. and postdoctoral degrees at Columbia University in New York. She taught history-theory classes and architectural design studios at Humboldt University in Berlin, Columbia University, New School, and Pratt Institute in New York, and METU in Ankara. Akcan received numerous awards and fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, Graham Foundation, Clark Institute, Getty Research Institute, Canadian Center for Architecture, CAA, Mellon Foundation, DAAD and KRESS/ARIT.  She is the author of the books Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House; Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (with Sibel Bozdoğan); Çeviride Modern Olan; and (Land)Fill Istanbul: Twelve Scenarios for a Global City.  She is currently working on her next book project on urban renewal.

 

 

 

Nidhi Srinivas

 

Nidhi Srinivas is Associate Professor of Non-profit Management at The New School in New York City. His research interests center on critical theory, civil society and post-colonial management knowledge. His research has been published in journals such as Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Organization Studies, Organization, and Critical Perspectives on International Business. Srinivas has a particular interest in the countries of India, China, Brazil and Turkey, countries that are sometimes called "middle-income" countries, and some of which are also known as "BRICS countries". His interest stems from the transitions made by these countries from colonial regimes of accumulation towards nationalist strategies of growth, particularly in their market policies and networks of civil society actors. From 2010-2012 Srinivas was an India-China Institute Fellow and studied social innovation  practices in Rajasthan, India and Yunnan, China. He was also a Fellow at the BRICS Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August 2013; in Rio de Janeiro he studied civil society responses to the impending mega events. Srinivas has also served as a visiting professor at the Escola Brasileira de Administraçao Publica e de Empresas (EBAPE) at the Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India.

 

 

 

Neil Korostoff

 

Neil Korostoff is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Pennsylvania State University, H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. His research interests include urban design, urban planning, informal urban settlements and park management in developing countries and particularly in Turkey. He was a Fulbright Senior Researcher in Turkey during the 2011 - 2012 academic year. He was based at Istanbul Technical University's Taşkışla campus in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. He worked closely with senior Turkish faculty there and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Department of City Planning and served as an advisor to the BirUmit urban activist collective.

 

 

Bert Mustafa Azizoğlu

 

Bert Mustafa Azizoğlu is a Ph.D. student in Public Policy and Fulbright Scholar at the New School in New York. His research focuses on how growing financial services sectors shape labor relations, employment and income distribution in OECD countries. Azizoglu has published numerous articles in edited volumes and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy amongst others. He holds BA/MA degrees in economics and law from the Vienna University of Economics and Business as well as the Rotterdam School of Management at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

 

 

Michael Hardt

 

Michael Hardt is the chair of the Literature Program at Duke University. His recent writings deal primarily with the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. In his books with Antonio Negri (Declaration, and the Empire Trilogy including Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth) he has analyzed the functioning of the current global power structure as well as the possible political and economic alternatives to that structure based on new institutions of shared, common wealth. Many of his seminars focus on the work of important figures in the history of critical theory and political theory, such as Marx, Jefferson, Gramsci, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. He also works on modern Italian literature and culture. He currently serves as editor of The South Atlantic Quarterly.

 

 

Jeffrey Goldfarb

 

Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of dozens of articles and eight books, including Civility and Subversion: the Intellectual in Democratic Society (Cambridge University Press, 1998), which provides the theoretical guidelines for the practices of his blog Deliberately Considered. He has studied, historically and comparatively, the conditions and consequences of free public life, with special focus on Central Europe and North America. In recent years he has been studying this problem in Israel – Palestine. He has also worked to link his theoretical endeavors to practical action in supporting free public life. For his public and intellectual work in Central Europe, Goldfarb was awarded the Solidarity Medal from the Polish government, presented by former President Lech Walesa.

 

 

Despina Lalaki

 

Despina Lalaki is a lecturer at the A.S. Onassis Program in Hellenic Studies, New York University.  In the past has taught at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, New York. Lalaki studied archaeology and history of art at the University of Athens and history and theory of art at Binghamton University, New York and sociology at the New School for Social Research, New York. Her doctoral dissertation was titled Digging for Democracy in Greece: Intra-Civilizational Processes During the American Century, examines the role of archaeology in the symbolic constitution of democracy in postwar Greece. She is currently editing a group volume entitled The Greek Culture in Crisis and the Culture of Crisis in Greece: Exploring Ambiguities and the Political in Representation.

 

 

Luck Tran

Lucky Tran is a scientist, activist, and creative who has lived, studied, and worked in Australia, the UK, & the US. Over the last two years he has participated in the Occupy movement as an organizer, media maker, and an artist. He is also involved with the visual activist collectives 'The Illuminator' and 'Not An Alternative'. He is particularly interested in the use of common digital architecture in encouraging participation in change-making and civic engagement.

 

 

Hakan Topal

 

Hakan Topal is an artist and scholar living and working in New York City. He is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Art+Design in the State University of New York's Purchase College and graduate faculty in the School of Visual Arts’ Fine Arts Department . He was cofounder of xurban_collective (2000–12) and has exhibited extensively, at the 8th and 9th Istanbul Biennials; apexart, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; MoMA PS1; Platform, Istanbul; and the 9th Gwangju Biennial. In 2010, he was guest editor of ArteEast Quarterly special issue On Silence and directed a film on eighteenth-century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, commissioned by Neue Galerie, New York. He is the coeditor of The Sea- Image: Visual Manifestations of Port Cities and Global Waters (D.A.P.). He is currently working on a project about collateral damage and condolence payments in globalised wars, supported by the Prince Claus Fund.