Karol Beffa had a general education along with music studies after having been a child actor, appearing in more than 15 films (in particular, he performed with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano under the direction of Giorgio Strehler and portrayed the 8-year-old Mozart in a television film by Marcel Bluwal). Top of his class at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he read history (BA), English (MA), philosophy (MPhil at.. Read More

Philippe Beck is a French poet, writer and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nantes in France and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. His book Contre un Boileau, un art poétique, came out in February 2015 (Fayard, collection Ouvertures).   Lecture: Poetry as the Science Fiction of Today The discrepancy between poetry and science fiction is no longer available. Our predicament has changed: poetry no longer.. Read More

Trisha Bauman has performed as a dancer and an actor in the companies of the French choreographer/directors Alain Buffard, Mathilde Monnier (Centre choregraphique national de Montpellier), Herman Diephuis, Cecile Proust and Daniel Larrieu (Centre choregraphique national de Tours), and of the New York City choreographers Roseanne Spradlin and Vicky Shick. She has toured widely with these companies, appearing in principle roles on stages such as Lincoln Center (NYC), The Kitchen.. Read More

Francis Wolff is currently Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. His past research has been on Ancient Philosophy and the works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. His work is now focused on contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. His latest book is on music and the arts in general: Pourquoi la musique? (Fayard, 2015).   Lecture: What is Music? When Wolff.. Read More

Howard Wettstein obtained his B.A. from Yeshiva University in 1965, and his Ph.D. from City University of New York in 1976. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at UC Riverside. Previously he held positions at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota, Morris and visiting positions at Stanford University and the University of Iowa. His main research areas are the philosophy of language and the philosophy of.. Read More

Brian Weatherson is the Marshall M. Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His doctorate is from Monash University, and he works on epistemology, ethics and language.   Lecture: Moral Risks If you don’t know what effect an action will have, but there’s a good chance it will seriously harm others, then you shouldn’t do it without a very good reason. Recently, several philosophers have argued.. Read More

Pierre Wagner is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne where he teaches logic and philosophy of logic. His other interests include the history of the philosophy of science, logical empiricism and the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap.   Lecture: Philosophy and Enlightenment in the Twenty-First Century The philosophical movement of the Enlightenment, far from being confined to its historical figures in the 18th Century, has promoted ideas and.. Read More

Marion Vorms is a lecturer in philosophy of science and epistemology at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In her past research, she developed a cognitive approach to scientific theorizing. She recently received a Marie Curie fellowship to develop her latest project, which centers on on the epistemology and psychology of judiciary decision-making, at Birkbeck College in London for two years.   Lecture: Reasonable Doubt, Intimate Conviction, and Degrees of Belief: Some.. Read More

Rossen Ventzislavov is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University. His interests include aesthetics, the history of philosophy, and critical theory. He has published work on architecture, popular music, psychoanalysis and curatorship. His current research focuses on performance art and social distinction.   Lecture: Performance Art: Three Ways of Being Serious In his presentation, Ventzislavov will explore three fundamental dimensions of performance art—the affective, the performative, and the political. Each.. Read More

Achille C. Varzi is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1995. Among his numerous published articles and books are Comedia Metaphysica (with C. Calosi); Il mondo messo a fuoco; Insurmountable Simplicities; Ontologia, An Essay in Universal Semantics, Parts and Places (with R. Casati); and Holes and Other Superficialities (with R. Casati).   Lecture: An Adventure in Flatland Can a Flatlander figure out whether they live.. Read More