Nach dem Menschen? Ringvorlesung im Wintersemester 2022/23

Ksenia Fedorova (PhD, University of California, Davis; PhD, Ural State University, Ekaterinburg) is Assistant Professor at Leiden University, NL.

She is the author of Tactics of Interfacing: Encoding Affect in Art and Technology (MIT Press, 2020) and the co-editor of Media: Between Magic and Technology (2014, in Russian), her other publications appeared in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Media & Culture Journal, Acoustic Space, Dialog of Arts and numerous edited volumes. Before joining Leiden University she was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin. In 2007-2011 she worked as a curator at the Ural branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts (Ekaterinburg, RU) where she initiated and led the “Art. Science. Technology” program.

Ksenia’s interests encompass media art theory and history, aesthetics, science and technology and visual culture studies, with a focus on the effects of technologies on human perception and interaction. 

Francesca Ferrando teaches Philosophy at NYU-Liberal Studies, New York University.

A leading voice in the field of Posthuman Studies and founder of the Global Posthuman Network, she has been the recipient of numerous honors and recognitions, including the Sainati prize with the Acknowledgement of the President of Italy. She has published extensively on these topics; her latest book is Philosophical Posthumanism (Bloomsbury 2019). In the history of TED talks, she was the first speaker to give a talk on the topic of the posthuman. US magazine “Origins” named her among the 100 people making change in the world.

Info: www.theposthuman.org

Rodrigo Menezes graduated in Social Communication from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (2003) and in Philosophy from Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo (2009), with a Masters degree in Sciences of Religion (2007) and PhD in Philosophy (2016) from the same university (PUC-SP). Both his Master's degree and his PhD were dedicated to investigating the works of Romanian-French philosopher Emil Cioran.

Menezes is the editor of Portal E.M. Cioran Brazil (est. 2010), and, besides that, an independent researcher, editor, and translator. His main philosophical interests revolve around philosophical anthropology and modern existential philosophies, philosophies of the absurd, tragic philosophies, existential and metaphysical pessimisms, nihilism and meontology, theodicy, skepticism, and atheism, and mysticism.

Further topics of interest concerning Cioran revolve around philosophy of religion and mysticism, in convergence with philosophies of existence, on the one hand (subject of my MA in Sciences of Religion), and, on the other (PhD), around the link between philosophy and literature, esthetics, essayistic and aphoristic writing, poetics of the fragment, writing as therapy or, as I like to call it, Cioran's "pharmacography" (after La Pharmacie de Platon, by Derrida, in which he elaborates on the notion of pharmakon). Menezes is also interested in the connection between literature, essayistic writing, and exile as deterritorialization.

Evi Sampanikou is Professor of Visual Culture and Art History at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean.

She has studied Archeology & Byzantine Studies and English Literature. She has taught at the Democritus University of Thrace (Greece) and has been collaborating with the Hellenic Open University for years. She focused her research initially on post-Byzantine painting (PhD), then on art theory, photography, new media art, comics & graphic novels and cultural management. Combining the above with the extensions of contemporary philosophy in art, she actively participates in international research activities related to Posthumanism and is a founding member of the Beyond Humanism Conference Series.

Among her recent publications are the books: Evi D. Sampanikou (ed) (2017). Audiovisual Posthumanism, Cambridge Scholars Press, and Evi D. Sampanikou & Jan Stasienko (eds) (2021), Posthuman Studies Reader. Core Readings on Transhumanism, Posthumanism and Metahumanism a Reader on Posthumanism. Schwabe Verlag.

Thomas Schmaus, Dr. phil., Dipl.-Theol.
Studium der Philosophie und der Katholischen Theologie an der LMU München, der Universität Wien und der Hochschule für Philosophie München – dort 2010 Promotion bei Gerd Haeffner mit einer Arbeit zum Denken Heinrich Rombachs („Philosophie des Flow-Erlebens“); seit 2013 Juniorprofessor, seit 2018 Professor für philosophische Anthropologie an der Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft in Alfter/Bonn; phänomenologische Ausrichtung.

Aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte: Mensch-Natur-Beziehungen (Anthropozän, Anthropo- und Ökozentrismus, Resonanz und Entfremdung, Urban Gardening) und Mensch-Technik-Verhältnisse (Digitalisierung, Trans- und Posthumanismus).

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner ist Philosophieprofessor an der John Cabot University in Rom, Direktor und Mitbegründer des Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow am Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow am Ewha Institute for the Humanities an der Ewha Womans University in Seoul und Visiting Fellow am Ethikzentrum der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena.

Er ist Herausgeber von mehr als zehn Aufsatzsammlungen und Autor von Metaphysics without Truth (Marquette UP, 2007), Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche (WBG, 2010), Transhumanismus (Herder, 2016), Schöner neuer Mensch (Nicolai, 2018), Übermensch (Schwabe, 2019), On Transhumanism (Penn State University Press, 2020), We have always been Cyborgs (Bristol University Press, 2022), Philosophy of Posthuman Art (Schwabe, 2022). Darüber hinaus ist er Chefredakteur und Gründungsherausgeber des Journal of Posthuman Studies, ein gefragter Redner in allen Teilen der Welt (World Humanities Forum, Global Solutions Taipei Workshop, Biennale Arte Venezia, TEDx) sowie regelmäßiger Ansprechpartner von nationalen und internationalen Journalisten und Medienvertretern. (Die Zeit, Cicero, Der Standard; Die Presse am Sonntag, Philosophy Now).

Weitere Informationen: www.mousike.de

Gerfried Stocker, Künstlerischer Leiter/Co-CEO Ars Electronica.

Weitere Informationen: Personenseite Gerfried Stocker/linzwiki

Veronika Wittmann is Associate Professor for Global Studies at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria and Deputy Head of the Institute for Cultural Economics and Cultural Research.

She was enrolled in the PhD Programme of the Austrian Academy of Science 2000-2001 and was a Junior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna 2000-2001 as well as a Research Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Ibero-American Studies in Hamburg 2006. Veronika Wittmann also worked at the United Nations (UNDP) in Ecuador in 2002. She has undertaken several field research works in Sub-Saharan Africa.

She received her venia legendi for Sociology at Johannes Kepler University Linz in 2013. She has published several books and papers in journals and in collective volumes and participated as invited speaker at numerous international conferences.

Science awards: Austrian Sociological Society science award for the best dissertation 2004; Dr. Leopold Kunschak Science Prize 2003; Kepler Science Prize 2002; Science award of the Dr. Maria Schaumeyer Foundation 2002.

Veronika Wittmann held the national Austrian leadership for Sustainable Development Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) at UniNEtZ (Universities and Sustainable Development Goals) from 2019 to 2021; she is the representativ of JKU at the Global Studies Consortium since 2014 as well as at Africa-UniNet - Network of all higher education and research institutions in Austria and in all countries of the African continent since 2020.

Her research areas include World Society and Global Politics, Digital Diplomacy, Science Diplomacy, Sustainable Development, and Cultural Studies.

Further information/Weitere Informationen (Dt./Engl.): Personenseite Veronika Wittmann/JKU Linz 

Michael F. Zimmermann, seit 2004 Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Kunstgeschichte an der Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, hat Kunstgeschichte, Philosophie und Geschichte in Köln, Rom und Paris studiert. Danach war er u.a. Zweiter Direktor am Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (1991-2002) sowie ordentlicher Professor an der Université de Lausanne (2002-04). Er ist Mitglied der Academia Europaea, London, sowie der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Seine Dissertation (1985, Köln) Seurat. Sein Werk und die kunsttheoretische Debatte seiner Zeit wurde 1991 in mehreren Sprachen publiziert. Seine Habilitation (2000, FU) Industrialisierung der Phantasie. Malerei, illustrierte Presse und das Mediensystem der Künste in Italien, 1875-1900 erschien 2006. Aufsätze unlängst über Bruegel, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Odilon Redon, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Allan Sekula, jeweils in wissens(chafts)geschichtlichen Kontexten, sowie über Bachtin, Benjamin, Foucault und Agamben. Forschungsschwerpunkt derzeit über Mediale Lebensformen und Visuelle Narratologie – Methoden partizipativen Bildverstehens.