Call for Applications: Yehuda Elkana Fellowship Workshop with Prizewinner Achille Mbembe in Belgrade
OSUN's Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (HAHN) in partnership with the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade is pleased to announce that the recipient of the Third Annual Yehuda Elkana Fellowship is Achille Mbembe, a research professor in history and politics at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) and the Director of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. A co-founder of Les Ateliers de la pensee de Dakar and a major figure in the emergence of a new wave of French critical theory, Achille Mbembe has written extensively on contemporary politics and philosophy, including On the Postcolony (University of California Press, 2001), Critique of Black Reason (Duke University Press, 2016), Necropolitics (Duke University Press, 2019), Out of the Dark Night. Essays on Decolonization (Columbia University Press, 2020), La communauté terrestre (Editions La Decouverte, 2023), Brutalism (Duke University Press, 2024). Originally written in French, his books and numerous articles have been translated into sixteen languages (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Dutch, Polish, Slovenian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Romanian, Arabic, Korean and Chinese).
As part of the fellowship, Achille Mbembe will be in residence for two weeks at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade, where he will give public lectures and at the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Rijeka. He will participate in a manuscript workshop from June 5th to 8th, 2024, with selected experts in the field, and faculty and students from OSUN institutions. This workshop will be an opportunity for OSUN scholars to interact intensively with each other and with a major scholar in the humanities. The provisional title/topic of his manuscript to be presented and discussed is "Democracy in the Age of Animism."
HAHN invites network faculty and graduate students to apply for the opportunity to participate in the workshop where they will read and discuss Yehuda Elkana Fellow Achille Mbembe’s manuscript in Belgrade, June 5-8, 2024. Eight applicants will be selected, based on their interests and motivations. All travel, meals, and accommodations for the workshop will be provided by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory courtesy of OSUN’s Hannah Arendt Humanities Network.
Uday Singh Mehta is the 2022 Yehuda Elkana Fellow
HAHN and Central European University (CEU) are pleased to announce that the recipient of the Second Annual Yehuda Elkana Fellowship is Uday Singh Mehta. The Fellowship is given in honor of Yehuda Elkana, the President and Rector of Central European University from 1999-2009. As part of the fellowship, Uday Singh Mehta will be in residence for one month at the Central European University. He will give two public lectures and participate in a week-long manuscript workshop from June 13th to 15th, 2022 with faculty and students from OSUN institutions. In this workshop, faculty selected from OSUN institutions will read and prepare
presentations on a book manuscript or series of essays by Uday Mehta. This workshop will be an opportunity for OSUN scholars to interact intensively with each other and with a major scholar in the humanities. It will be open to faculty and students.
"In a sense for Gandhi courage and fearlessness were portals for a sort of spiritual truancy, which he sought to plant in the very midst of the mundane patterns of everyday life."
—Uday Singh Mehta
Uday Mehta is one of the most important and original political thinkers of our times, someone who engages the fullness of the liberal arts tradition of thinking critically about our world, very much in the spirit of Yehuda Elkana. For several decades he has been one of the most influential thinkers and critics of the liberal tradition of political thought. With both rigor and creativity, Mehta explores the hidden ambitions for imperial domination that underlie the supposedly tolerant foundations of liberalism. He is, in other words, a guide to a subterranean illiberal stream within liberalism.
2021 Fellow: Helga Nowotny
Helga Nowotny is one of the most prominent scholars in science studies worldwide, an area that counted Yehuda Elkana as one of its pioneers and promoters. For several decades she has been one of the most influential institution builders in European higher education and research. At times, she partnered with Yehuda Elkana in daring new academic and institutional endeavors. Throughout her long and distinguished academic career at institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, Helga Nowotny has embraced and helped establish an interdisciplinary and engaged approach to the study of science. Her highly consequential research and publications focus on matters such as dealing with technological risks, coping with uncertainty, time and social theory, organization of science, gender relations in science and “the place of people in our knowledge” (the title of one of her studies). She has launched or helped establish influential new concepts and theories, such as “Mode 2” of scientific research.