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Eva Maria Borsi is a psychologist and civil activist, working for the Hungarian migrant support group Migszol. Recently, she has been engaged in volunteer work for asylum seekers in the Budapest and Szeged (a Hungarian city at the point where the Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian borders meet) transit zones. Before getting involved in helping with the current refugee crisis, Eva…

The De Balie / Institute of Ideas debate, Diversity: empowering some, silencing others?, looked at notions of inclusion and social representation. You can enjoy a full recording of the debate here and you can find out more about the debate’s theme, speakers and organisers, on our event page by clicking here. The debate formed part of this year’s Battle of Ideas festival…

Alexander Pollak currently works as SOS Mitmensch‘s spokesperson. At SOS Mitmensch he is also partially responsible for the general management of the association and has been heavily involved in campaigning for equal rights and opportunities, with, for example, the Wiener Pass Egal campaign, which looks to increase awareness of the political exclusion of migrants. Alexander studied commerce and applied linguistics…

Irene Brickner is an editor and commentator, who currently works for the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Her previous employers include the defunct SPÖ [Socialist Party of Austria] publication Neue AZ [New Workers’ Newspaper], the NÖN [Lower Austrian News] newspaper and the Austrian national broadcaster the ORF. Irene’s work often deals with human rights issues, addressing topical matters related to asylum…

Shams Asadi is the City of Vienna’s human rights commissioner and the director of the newly opened Human Rights Office of the City of Vienna. Before becoming the city’s human rights commissioner, she was involved in protecting employees’ rights and combatting discrimination for the Viennese regional government. A trained spatial development planner of Iranian origin, Shams has lived, studied and…

Liah Greenfeld was born in Vladivostok in 1954. She is a professor of sociology, political science and anthropology at Boston University. She has a PhD in the sociology of art from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has taught sociology in several American universities, including Harvard, Chicago and MIT. Since the publication of her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity…

Mikołaj Ratajczak is a philosopher, translator and member of the editorial collective of the journal Praktyka Teoretyczna. He has translated Karl Marx’s Resultate des unmittelbaren Produktionsprozess [Results of the Direct Production Process] into Polish and is the co-author of the Polish edition of Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth. Currently he’s working on a book on contemporary Italian political philosophy. Information valid…

This discussion has now finished, but you can find a full audio recording of the live stream on our event page, where video highlights will also soon be made available. Beyond the public sphere, towards the commons featured Antonio Negri, Ewa Majewska, Mikołaj Ratajczak and Igor Stokfiszewski and you can read more information about both the speakers and the afternoon’s…

Ewa Majewska is a feminist cultural philosopher, who currently lectures in gender studies at the University of Warsaw and is researching Europe’s “semi-peripheral publics” at Berlin’s ICI [Institute for Cultural Enquiry]. Ewa originally studied philosophy, French literature and gender studies at the University of Warsaw and completed her doctorate in philosophical conceptions of the family in 2007. Since then, Ewa…

Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist, scholar, revolutionary philosopher and author, who’s work has been heavily influenced by Karl Marx and Benedict Baruch Spinoza and who his best known for his autonomist Marxist writings and the Empire trilogy – co-written with Michael Hardt – which traces the changes in power structures accompanying globalisation and offers philosophical frameworks for resistance.…