Avishai Margalit is an Israeli Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2011, he served as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Among his publications are Idolatry (with Moshe Halbertal, Harvard University Press, 1992), The Decent Society (Harvard University Press, 1996), Views…

Prof. Achille Mbembe, born in Cameroon, obtained his Ph.D in History at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989 and a D.E.A. in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris). He was Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, New York, from 1988-1991, a Senior Research Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., from…

Dr ir. Melanie Peters is director of Studium Generale at Utrecht University since 2006. She teaches “Interdisciplinary leadership” in the Liberal Arts and Sciences BA, Utrecht University. After her studies on Food Technology and Toxicology at Wageningen University, Peters received her PhD in 1993 in Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Imperial College in London. She then…

Prof. dr. Wijnand Mijnhardt is a professor of medieval history, in particular of culture, mentality and history of ideas. He is also director of Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities. Wijnand Mijnhardt specializes in cultural history from 1650 to 1850. In recent years, he focuses mainly on the intellectual…

Aernout Mik is an artist whose video installations, sculptures, and performances allow for a reflective engagement between spectator and artwork. He was awarded the A.H. Heineken Prize for Art in 2002. He represented the Netherlands in the Dutch Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007 with multiple works and an architectural intervention in the…