Is an American pragmatist philosopher, currently the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University. He is also associated with the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. He was an associate of the École des Hautes Études in Sciences Sociales in Paris, a Fulbright Professor in Berlin. Professor Shusterman’s research (for which he received a Senior National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship and other prestigious awards) ranges widely from high-brow topics to popular culture, integrating perspectives from European, American, Jewish, African-American, and East-Asian studies. His authored books include Body Consciousness (2008); Surface and Depth (2002); Performing Live (2000); Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (1997); Sous l’interprétation (1994), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (1992, 2nd edition 2000, and already translated into twelve languages); and T.S. Eliot and the Philosphy of Criticism (1988). He is internationally known for his contributions to philosophical aesthetics and the emerging field of somaesthetics.
One of the most known Ukrainian intellectuals. He is a research associate at the Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and a member of the editorial boards of “Krytyka” monthly and “Journal of South Eastern Europe” quarterly. He authored a number of books and many articles on civil society, state/nation building, nationalism, national identity, and post-communist transition in the post-Soviet countries, primarily in Ukraine, including “De la petit Russie a l’Ukraine” (L’Harmattan, 2003), “Die reale und die Imaginierte Ukraine” (Suhrkamp 2006) and “Gleichschaltung. Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012” (KIS 2012).He held a number of fellowships, including Fulbright (USA, 1994-96), Reuters (Oxford, 2000), Milena Jesenska Fellowship (Vienna, 2001) and, most recently, Reagan-Fascell research fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington DC, 2011). He lectured in Canadian, American and Polish universities, including Columbia (2006), University of Alberta (2004 and 2007/2008), and University of Warsaw (recurrently, since 2002).
Is a British diplomat and advisor. He is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and an acclaimed publisher on foreign affairs. He graduated Oxford and University of Pennsylvania. Since 1970 Robert Cooper is a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service. He served in New York, Tokyo, Brussels and Bonn. He was also the Head of Policy Planning (1989-1993), Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (1999-2001). From 2002 he was the Director General/Council of the European Union, later Counsellor, European External Action Service. In years 2012-14 he was a Special Adviser on Myanmar to the EU High Representative. Author of The Breaking of Nations (2003).
Is a French writer, intellectual, professor, editor and politician. Since June 2013, he has been the Director of France-Amérique, a magazine for francophones living in the US and American francophiles. Guy Sorman is also a Member of the Board of the Columbia “Maison Française” and of “Reporters without Borders”. After working as an advisor to the French Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997, he was appointed to the “Strategic Committee for Exterior Television Action”. Among his many functions, he was also a member of the “National Commission on Human Rights” from 2002 to 2007. Founder and former President of “Action Against Hunger”. He is an auhtor of more than 20 books, among others : Le Progrès et ses ennemis (2001) (Progress and Its Enemies), Les enfants de Rifaa (2003) (In Search of Moderate Islam), Made in USA (2004), L’Année du Coq (2006), The Empire of Lies. The truth about China in the 21st century (2008), L’Économie ne ment pas (2008) (Economics does not lie), Wonderful World. Chronique de la mondialisation (2006-2009) (2009).
Professor in the History of European International Relations, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Peterhouse. He has been involved in policy work through the (Conservative) BOW Group, the (Labour) Foreign Policy Centre, the British Irish Association, and the Bosnian Institute (London). He is also co-president of the Henry Jackson Society and President of the Project for Democratic Union. He has been interviewed by BBC 4, BBC World Service, RTE, and numerous Balkan radio programmes. Simms has given lectures in Britain, Ireland, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia on various aspects of the Bosnian War. Author of numerous articles and reviews for the Times Higher Educational Supplement, Observer, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Spectator, The times, Independent, Evening Standard, London Review of Books, and Wall Street Journal. Publications: Unfinest hour. Britain and the destruction of Bosnia (2001), Europe. The struggle for supremacy, 1453 to the present (2013), among others.
British author and broadcaster is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. During the past 15 years Furedi’s studies have been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments that influence the construction of contemporary risk consciousness. During the past decade his research has been oriented towards the way that risk and uncertainty is managed by contemporary culture. He has published widely about controversies relating to issues such as health, parenting, children, food and new technology. His Invitation To Terror; Expanding the Empire of the Unknown(2007) explores the way in which the threat of terrorism has become amplified through the ascendancy of possibilistic thinking. It develops the arguments contained in two previous books The Culture of Fear (2003) and Paranoid Parenting(2001). He is currently working on a text Taking Freedom Seriously.
A Russian writer, literary critic and publisher. He organised his own literary magazine, Metropol, in which many of the big names of Soviet literature participated, including Vasily Aksyonov, Andrei Bitov, Bella Akhmadulina, and others. The magazine was put into circulation via samizdat, i.e., avoiding Soviet censorship. As a result, Erofeyev was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and was banned from being published until 1988, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Currently resides in Moscow and frequently appears on Russian television, where he has his own program on the channel “Kultura” (“culture”); he also has a program on Radio Liberty, Moscow. Erofeyev also regularly contributes to The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The International Herald Tribune. The 2012 Finnish documentary movie, “Russian Libertine”, is centered around Victor Erofeyev and his view of the protests leading up to the 2012 Russian Presidential election.
An award-winning Indian essayist and novelist and a recipient of the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Mishra has written literary and political essays for The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the New Yorker, among other American, British, and Indian publications. He is a columnist for Bloomberg View and the New York Times Book Review. He divides his time between London and India, and is presently working on a novel. He authored: Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond (2006), From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (2012) and A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and Its Neighbours (2013), among others.
A Russian and American journalist and author. She served as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow LGBT rights organization “Triangle”. Her 2012 book “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin” is a political biography of Vladimir Putin, whom she describes as a dictator. Gessen covered Pussy Riot and their punk rock protest against Putin in her 2014 book “Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot”. In September 2012, Gessen was appointed as director of the Russian Service for Radio Liberty, a US government funded broadcaster based in Prague. In December 2013 she moved to New York to avoid legislation in Russia that bans “homosexual propaganda”. On 31 March 2014, Gessen wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Putin’s speech to the Duma in which she expressed concern that “Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world”.
Photo credit: Svenya Generalova
A Belarusian and Polish journalist and activist of the Polish minority in Belarus. He worked as a journalist for several Belarusian media – Den’, Narodnaja Volia, Głos znad Niemna and Magazyn Polski. He is one of the leaders of the Union of Poles in Belarus. A correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Poczobut has been arrested more than a dozen times by the government of Belarus. In 2011, he was sentenced to a fine and fifteen days in prison for “participation in the unsanctioned protest rally” following the 2010 presidential election. In 2011 and 2012, he was arrested and detained for allegedly libeling President Alexander Lukashenko in his reports. The charges against Poczobut received international condemnation, with groups including the European Parliament, Reporters Without Borders, and Amnesty International issuing statements in his support.
A Belarusian politician, diplomat and activist. In the early 1990s, he headed the Belarusian delegation on Nuclear and Conventional Weapons Armament Negotiations, also serving as the Belarusian diplomat to Switzerland. He served as Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus, resigning as a form of political protest. He co-founded the civil action Charter 97, and was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize in 2005. Sannikov was a candidate at the 2010 presidential election in Belarus, and had the second highest percentage of the popular votes after incumbent Alexander Lukashenko. He was incarcerated in a Minsk KGB facility for peacefully protesting at a demonstration after the elections, and faced up to a 15-year imprisonment. Amnesty International labeled him a prisoner of conscience and called for his immediate release on the grounds that he may be facing torture and medical neglect while in custody. On 14 May 2011, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on charges of organizing mass disturbances. According to his wife, noted journalist Iryna Khalip, as of September 2011 Sannikov was in grave danger of murder and injury while incarcerated, and was being pressured by authorities to leave politics. He was released and pardoned by Lukashenko on 14 April 2012.
Ukrainian historian, head of the Scientific Research Department Institute, University of Lviv, professor of the Central European University in Budapest and Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Member of Scientific Committee of Collegium Artium in Krakow (Poland). Editor of scientific magazine “Ukraina Moderna”, international intellectual magazine focused on modern history of Ukraine and Central-Eastern Europe. Author of The Spirit that Moves to Battle…’ An attempt of a political portrait of Ivan Franko (1856-1916) (1990) and Essays in Ukrainian History: Making of Modern Ukrainian Nation (1996).
Polish lawyer, social activist, defender of human rights. In 2004–2008 he was the coordinator of Litigation Program of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, since 2008 he is a member of the Foundation. Expert Agency for Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which provides consultancy in the field of human rights in Poland.
A Polish film and TV director and screenwriter. Her first steps were by Krzysztof Zanussi side. She received her first significant award in Cannes for movie Aktorzy prowincjonalni and she was appreciated outside the Poland. Her works were quickly noticed in the world which is evidence of triple nomination for an Oscar for movie Gorzkie żniwa, Europa, Europa and W ciemności. In works she often raises serious topics which source is in war experience of characters. Her talent and film works often are comparable to Andrzej Wajda works. Since January 2014 Holland is chairperson of European Film Academy in Berlin.
A journalist and TV presenter, deputy editor–in–chief of “Rzeczpospolita”. In the years 1989–2011 he wrote for “Gazeta Wyborcza”. He was a correspondent in Moscow, Brussels and Washington. . He also leads programs such as Świat według Węglarczyka and Słoń a sprawa polska in Superstacja and magazine World in TVN24 Business and the World.
A Polish sinologist, diplomat, political scientist and journalist. He specializes in international relations, most of all connected with China. In 2001–2003 he was a leader in office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, from 2003 to 2008 he was an ambassador the Republic of Poland in the Kingdom of Thailand, Republic of the Philippines and the Union Mjanmy. Casual he lectures at the European Centre of the University of Warsaw and creates TVN 24 Business and the World.
A President of the National Endowment for Democracy, worked with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Non-governmental active activist whose aim is to strengthen democracy in the world. He encourages all organizations in the world to promote democracy and its spread. He writes articles about foreign policy for such newspapers as “The Wall Street Journal”, “The Washington Post”, “The New York Times Magazine”, “Democratization” and “The Journal of Democracy”. He is the author of The Foreign Policy of the American Labor.
Secretary General of the World Organization Against Torture. He served over eight years with the International Commission of Jurists whose purpose was to guard of human rights in the world. He was active in the fight against terrorism and maintain security being the director of Global Security and Rule of Law Initiative. In Poland, worked on projects to combat torture.
A Polish politician, former deputy Minister of Economy. In 1985 he co–founded the Freedom and Peace Movement. In 1990–1993 he was director of the Office of Analysis and Information Office of the State. Parliamentary expert to the Special Services Committee from 1998 to 2001. He was associated with the Union of Freedom and the Democratic Party. He was awarded the Silver Cross of Merit and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta Polish.
A Polish political scientist, diplomat, former director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, advisor to the polish president for international affairs. At the Warsaw University he lectures on international political relations, human rights, strategic studies, international organizations and polish foreign policy. In 1995 he was a member of the polish delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He was awarded the French Legion of Honour.
Attorney-at-law practising in St. Petersburg. He is representing individual applicants before the European Court of Human Rights, and the UN human rights treaty bodies. He has graduated from the St. Petersburg State University in Russia and the University of Essex in the United Kingdom (LL.M. in International Human Rights Law). In March 2014 Sergey Golubok spoke on problems of Russian criminal justice at the Harvard University. He has a number of publications on public international law, international criminal law, and human rights in English and Russian.
Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights at the Supreme Bar Council, since 2001 member of the District Bar Association in Warsaw, an alternate member of the District Bar Council. He specializes in criminal law, including proceedings relating to economic crimes and related liability entrepreneurs. Winner of Edward J. Wende prize.
A sinologist, researcher and lecturer. He is a graduate of sociology at the University of Warsaw. Researcher and lecturer in the School of Business in Nowy Sacz and Tischner European University. Fr. Tischner in Kraków. Expert on Chinese culture. Consultant and author of the training for the Chinese market. He spent more than four years in China and Taiwan. Asia expert at the Institute of Globalisation in Gliwice and in the Sobieski Institute.
