Festival Focus 2016: Newcomers

Wednesday, March 2nd, 18:00, National gallery in Ljubljana (Auditorium), entry from Prešernova ulica.

ACADEMIC NOMADS

At important international conferences, scientists, researchers and professors, particularly those under 45, usually use the first break to talk about where they had lived and worked in the past years. Some of them move every semester, others remain at the same university (or institute) for a couple of years, while still others live in-between two countries, living in one and regularly flying to work in the other. Those who can afford to put down roots in one place are becoming few and far between. Is this the result of the globalization of the world and of science that forces researchers to compete in the international environment, or are the (younger) scientists, lecturers and researchers the victims of austerity measures at their almae matres compelling them to find a place for themselves in foreign countries? Does the flow of young researchers result in the advancement of science, or is science becoming increasingly tepid, superficial and uniform? How does this affect the lives of those who have decided to become academic nomads and live in the world of uncertainty? Is an academic career, which used to be synonymous with amazing job security, becoming one of the riskiest decisions one could take? And furthermore: what (if anything) are Slovenian universities doing to bring their students back? Is it true that those who leave their Slovenian alma mater find it very difficult to be accepted back, or is this just a myth?

Moderated by: Manca G. Renko

This event is kindly hosted by the renovated National gallery in Ljubljana.

About the guests and the host:

Srećko Horvat (1983), Croatian philosopher, journalist and activist, is not only one of the most conspicuous voices from the region of former Yugoslavia, but also one of the most recognisable thinkers of his generation. He has written a number of books, including What Does Europe Want (Što Europa želi, 2013), which he has co-authored with Slavoj Žižek and which has already been translated into a number of other languages. Horvat regularly publishes articles in various media: The Guardian, Al Jazeera, New York Times, El Pais, Mladina, etc. He had founded and headed the acclaimed Croatian Subversive Festival with guests such as Slavoj Žižek, Tariq Ali, Alexis Cipras and Oliver Stone. Horvat is currently the head of Philosophical Theatre, a programme of the Croatian National Theatre (HNK) that attracts eminent thinkers from all over the world to give lectures in Zagreb. Recently, British publisher Polity published Horvat’s first book written in English, The Radicality of Love, in which the author deals with the attitudes of 20^th century revolutionaries, from Lenin to Che Guevara, towards love.

Maja Petrović-Šteger is a social anthropologist with plenty of research and fieldwork experience from Serbia, Tasmania and Switzerland who specializes in matters related to anthropology of the body, medical anthropology and legal anthropology. She has researched contexts in which the body becomes a polygon for various political, legal, scientific and artistic practices. She has lectured at Cambridge and at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Faculty of the Arts of the University of Ljubljana, and has been guest lecturer at Oxford, Bilbao, Yale, Osaka, Linz, Oslo, etc.