Dear visitors of the Night,
as in any events of such scale, a few of our confirmed speakers won’t be able to join us!
Toni Negri, Judith Revel and Frédéric Keck are unfortunately withheld in France.
Be assured that you’ll still have the difficult task to choose between many enticing debates, lectures, screenings and artworks simultaneously happening!
Kristin 
is an independent scholar based in Berlin, specialized in Hegel, gender & feminist thought, and 20th Century Philosophy. After completing two years with Erasmus Mundus Europhilosophie, she went on to finish her doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Memphis. She is passionate about questions of time & temporality as well as art, film, music, & their curation.
Monika Rogowska-Stangret is a theorist and researcher in the fields of philosophy, gender studies and animal studies. She collaborates with the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Monika received scholarships from the Kosciuszko Foundation, ERSTE Stiftung and WUS Austria (in the frames of PATTERNS Lectures programme) and from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. She is a Member of Management Committee of European network: “New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’”, European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). She collaborates with “Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki,” has translated Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” (Czarna Owca 2014) and works by, among others, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, and Susan Sontag. She is the author of Ciało – poza Innością i Tożsamością. Trzy figury ciała w filozofii współczesnej” (Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, Gdańsk 2016, English title: “The Body – Beyond Otherness and Sameness. Three Figures of the Body in Contemporary Philosophy”).
Distinguished Professor at the Paris Ouest Nanterre University and at the University of California, Irvine, Étienne Balibar is a prominent figure of contemporary philosophy. His works mainly deal with political philosophy (as in Politics and the Other Scene, published in English in 2012, or Equaliberty: Political Essays in 2014 ). A former student of Louis Althusser, he was excluded from French communist party in March 1981 after writing in the press against the party’s racist stance. A member of the French Human Rights League, he has been committed in defending rights for the undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers. Since 2007 he’s headed the France Jan Hus Association founded in 1982 by Jacques Derrida. His latest publications in English include a thorough reflection on the fate of Europe (as in his book translated into English in 2004, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship; or in his last book in French, Europe : crise et fin ? in 2016).
Adam Budak is the Chief Curator of the National Gallery in Prague. He acted as International Curator for Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2012-14). He worked with artists such as Louise Bourgeois, John Baldessari, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Cerith Wyn Evans and Monika Sosnowska, and has curated a large number of international exhibitions. Adam Budak has published extensively, and edited a number of publications, including two-volume anthology of texts “What Is Architecture?” (Krakow, 2002, 2007).
As an art historian and a curator, Tomáš Winter looks into modern art in the 20th century, with special focus on caricatures on the one hand, and on primitivism and non-European art on the other hand, as in his 2013 book investigating the relationship between Czech fine art and non-European cultures in the last century (Palmy na Vltavě. Primitivismus, mimoevropské kultury a české výtvarné umění 1850-1950). He investigates the relationship between art, politics and communication, and is leading a research on Folk art between visual culture and politics in Bohemia and Moravia (1840–1960). He is currently preparing an exhibition and book on sport and fine art. A researcher at the Institute of Art history of the Czech Academy of sciences, he lectures at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice.
Trained at the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest and at the EHESS in Paris, Ádám Takács seeks to understand the relationship between history and ideologies in European—and Hungarian— 20th century (as in “Totalitarianism as an Atmosphere. Morality and Mentality in Hungary under the Kádár regime”, Divinatio, 2013). A specialist of Foucault and Husserl, to whom he dedicated a book (Le fondement selon Husserl. Une idée de la phénoménalité, 2014), Ádám Takács is also a translator of French philosophy (Foucault, Ricoeur, Deleuze). He currently teaches at the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest.
Monika Rogowska-Stangret is a theorist and researcher in the fields of philosophy, gender studies and animal studies. She collaborates with the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Monika received scholarships from the Kosciuszko Foundation, ERSTE Stiftung and WUS Austria (in the frames of PATTERNS Lectures programme) and from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. She is a Member of Management Committee of European network: “New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’”, European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). She collaborates with “Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki,” has translated Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” (2014) and works by, among others, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, and Susan Sontag. She is the author of “Ciało – poza Innością i Tożsamością. Trzy figury ciała w filozofii współczesnej” (2016), English title: “The Body – Beyond Otherness and Sameness. Three Figures of the Body in Contemporary Philosophy”).
A specialist of 20th century European philosophy, on which he edited a volume with T. Ullman (Kontinentális filozófia a XX. században, 2011), and the author of a book on Arendt’s political existentialism (Hannah Arendt politikai egzisztencializmusa, 2008), Csaba Olay investigates the relationships between freedom, mass culture and aesthetics (such as in his 2014 A művészettől a tömegkultúráig, with J. Weiss). He coedited in French and English with Jean-Claude Gens a collective volume on Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor (Interpretation, Modernity and Identity, 2014). He teaches contemporary philosophy at the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest.
Polish sociologist Michał Szymon Łuczewski has been focusing on the relationship between Polish identity and catholicism, on which he published his 2012 book Odwieczny naród. Polak i katolik w Żmiącej. A member of the “apocalyptical” magazine 44 / Czterdzieści i Cztery, he is a regular contributor to various Polish magazines, such as Wprost and Arcana. A member since 2015 of the Polish National Development Council, he currently works at the Institute of sociology of the Warsaw University.
Trained in literature, philosophy and sociology in Warsaw and Paris, Jan Sowa focuses his work on (Western) modernity, with special emphasis on the relationship between European and other cultures. He published many articles and books on current issues related to colonialism (as in his 2007 book Ciesz się, późny wnuku! Kolonializm, globalizacja i demokracja radykalna), migration and globalization. A regular contributor to several journals, such as Krytyka Polityczna, Praesens, or Ha!art., whose foundation he presides, he recently coedited a collection of essays entitled A Joy Forever: Political Economy of Social Creativity, including articles by Luc Boltanski, Massimiliano Tomba, Isabelle Graw and Gigi Roggero (MayFly Books, 2015). Jan Sowa currently teaches at the Jagellon University in Cracow.
Petr Koťátko works at the Department of Analytic Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and teaches at the Department of Logics at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. His research interests include theory of meaning, reference, speech acts, analytical metaphysics and theory of fictional discourse. His recent work combines philosophy of language and literary theory.
Petr Urban is a philosopher and translator based at the Czech Academy of Sciences where he leads the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Institute of Philosophy). His expertise lies in the areas of phenomenological philosophy and care ethics. He is author or editor of The Birth of Phenomenology (2010 in German), Phenomenology of the Body (2011 in Czech) and The Early Husserl and the Philosophy of Language (2013 in Czech). Apart from questioning the human-animal line, the conundrum of one´s own body and the ethical implications of care-providing, he also served as a mayor of South-Bohemian village Bednárec.
Read more on Vesmír or academia.edu
Is the political sphere condemned to failure? This was the core question French philosopher Étienne Tamsin explored in one of his last books ( Le maléfice de la vie à plusieurs – La politique est-elle vouée à l’échec? 2012). A specialist of Hannah Arendt to whom he dedicated several books (among which Le trésor perdu. Hannah Arendt et l’intelligence de l’action politique, 1999 ), Étienne Tassin writes mainly on political action, interrogating today’s forms of cosmopolitism and experiences of migration (see Un monde commun. Pour une cosmopolitique des conflits, 2003). A member of the Institute of Humanities in Paris, he currently teaches at Paris Diderot University.
Listen to Étienne Tassin on France Culture.
Working in the field of political philosophy, Carole Widmaier confronted Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss’s approach to the modern crisis in Fin de la philosophie politique ? Hannah Arendt contre Leo Strauss, 2012. She has lately edited and translated Hannah Arendt’s essay on politics (Qu’est-ce que la politique ?, 2014). She also explores the relationship between biological and social fields (the legitimacy of analogies between them), and between time and institutions (the efficiency of the institution and the arising of freedom).
