UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON, UK – ULRIKE HANNA MEINHOF
lrike Hanna Meinhof, DPhil, is Professor of German and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Transnational Studies at the University of Southampton. She has wide-ranging experience in directing international collaborative research funded by the British ESRC and AHRC and the EU Framework programmes. Her research combines ethnography with discourse analysis in a variety of settings such as cross-border communities, multi-cultural capital cities; transnational musicians’ networks across Africa and Europe; multicultural networks and neighbourhoods in provincial regions and towns. Co-authored or co-edited volumes of the last decade include Cultural Globalization and Music. African Artists in Transnational Networks. (2011); Borders, Networks, Neighbourhoods. Negotiating Multicultural Europe. (2011); Music and Arts in Action (2011) Transcultural Europe: Cultural Policy in a Changing Europe (2006) The Language of Belonging (2005). h
UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI, FINDLAND – Bo Stråth
Bo Stråth was 2007-2014 Finnish Academy Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the Department of World Cultures/Centre of Nordic Studies (CENS), University of Helsinki. 1997-2007 he was Professor of Contemporary History at the European University Institute in Florence, and 1990-1996 Professor in History at the University of Gothenburg. Bo Stråth’s research has focused on philosophy of history and political, social and economic theory of modernity, from a conceptual history perspective with special attention to questions of what keeps societies together or divides them, and how community is constructed. In particular, his research attention has been to the roles of language, symbols and interpretative frameworks for the construction of community, legitimacy and identities. A special field of interest in this perspective is the history of European integration and the exploration of Europe in its global historical (19th-20th century) context through the method of conceptual history.
HERTIE SCHOOL OF GOVERNANCE, GERMANY – HELMUT ANHEIER
Helmut K. Anheier is Dean and Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance. He also holds a chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of the Center for Social Investment. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1986. From 2001 to 2009, he was Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Professor Anheier founded and directed the Centre for Civil Society at LSE and the Center for Civil Society at UCLA. Before embarking on an academic career, he served as social affairs officer to the United Nations. He is currently researching the role of foundations in civil society and focuses on concepts and methods in civil society and globalization studies. Prof. Anheier is the editor of the annual Global Civil Society Yearbook (with Mary Kaldor and Marlies Glasius) and the Cultures and Globalization Series (with Raj Isar). He is also Editorial Board Member of leading international Journals in his research fields.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, USA – MICHÈLE LAMONT
Michèle Lamont is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies, and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a cultural sociologist, specializing in the study of inequality, race and ethnicity, the evaluation of social science knowledge, and the impact of neoliberalism on advanced industrial societies. Lamont is the author of Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class (University of Chicago Press, 1992), The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (Harvard University Press, 2000), and How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgement (Harvard University Press, 2009). Lamont is currently working on a collaborative project Getting Respect: Dealing with Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY (UWS), AUSTRALIA – TONY BENNETT
Tony Bennett is Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory in the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academy of the Social Sciences in the UK. His main books include Formalism and Marxism (1979), Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (1987, with Janet Woollacott), Outside Literature (1991), The Birth of the Museum (1995), Culture: A Reformer’s Science (1998), Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism (2004), and Making Culture, Changing Society (2013). He is also a co-author of Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (1999) and Culture, Class, Distinction (2009).
