Is there a European Identity?: Speaker bios

Feb. 9, 2021

Magali Bessone is a professor of political philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. A former student of the Ecole Normale supérieure in Paris, she holds the agrégation and a PhD in philosophy. Her work focuses on contemporary liberalism, on theories of justice, on international criminal justice and on theories of race and racism. She has published an annotated translation of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (Les Âmes du peuple noir, ENS, 2004, reprint La Découverte, 2007); she is the author of Sans distinction de race ? (Paris, Vrin, 2013). With Daniel Sabbagh, she co-edited the anthology Race, racisme, discriminations (Hermann, 2015). Her latest book Faire justice de l'irréparable. Esclavage colonial et responsabilités contemporaines was published in November 2019 by Editions Vrin.

Riva Kastoryano is a senior research fellow at the CNRS and teaches at the Institute for Political Sciences (Sciences-Po—Paris). Her current work explores the meaning of community in relation to states, territory, and space. She is particularly interested in how the transnational uses of religion and ethnicity for political purposes in Europe and other democratic societies give rise to a “transnational nationalism,” a new form of nationalism beyond state boundaries as well as a new expression of belonging and political engagement. Her books include Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany (Princeton University Press, 2002). Kastoryano earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics at the Sorbonne and her PhD in sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale. She held a lectureship in social studies at Harvard University for three years. After she returned to Paris, she was appointed to the CNRS affiliated with CERI-Sciences.

Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities, specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. Before moving to Columbia in 2007 he taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at New York University. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (2017), The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (2016), The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007),The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (2001),and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1993). He has also edited The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001) with Ronald Dworkin and Robert Silvers, and The Public Face of Architecture (1987) with Nathan Glazer. He is currently writing a book titled Ignorance and Bliss, and another on the history of the idea of conversion.

Mark Mazower, Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in modern Greece, 20th-century Europe, and international history. He comments on international affairs and reviews books for the Financial Times, the Nation, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and others. In 2016 he made a film Techniques of the Body, a meditation on the refugee crisis in Greek history, with director Constantine Giannaris. His most recent book is What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home (Other Press, 2017), a family history. He is founding director of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, which opened at Reid Hall in Paris in fall 2018 and which brings together scholars with leading artists, writers, composers and film-makers from around the world

 

Feb. 2, 2021

Felwine Sarr, né en 1972 à Niodior dans le Sine-Saloum, est un écrivain, économiste, universitaire et musicien sénégalais. Agrégé des universités et professeur titulaire du Conseil africain et malgache pour l'enseignement supérieur, il enseigne pendant 13 ans, de 2007 à 2020, à l’université Gaston-Berger (UGB) de Saint-Louis au Sénégal. Ses cours et travaux académiques portent sur les politiques économiques, l’économie du développement, l’économétrie, l’épistémologie et l’histoire des idées religieuses.

Thierry Grillet est ancien élève de l’École normale supérieure. Il a enseigné dix ans la culture générale à l'Institut d'Études politiques de Paris. Journaliste au Monde, à Libération et au Nouvel observateur, il collabore à des nombreuses revues (Médium, AOC, etc). Il a dirigé les Éditions du Georges Pompidou. Ancien directeur du développement culturel et du musée de la BnF, il a publié de nombreux ouvrages dont : Dictionnaire de la pensée du cinéma (Presses Universitaires de France) et des Essais sur la culture (Les 300, Éditions First). Dernier ouvrage paru : James Tissot (éditions Place des Victoires).