Bios of Contributors

Francisco Balaguer Callejón isProfessor of Constitutional Law at the University of Granada and Jean Monnet Professor ad personam of European Constitutional Law and Globalisation. Author of over 700 publications in twelve countries. He has given over 700 lectures, presentations, courses and seminars in German, English, Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish in 16 countries. He is an "Honoris Causa" doctor at the Universidade Federal de Maranhão in São Luís, Brazil, 2011. Visiting Professor in the United States (IUPUI, Indianapolis, 1985), France (Montpellier University, 2015; Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, 2024), Italy (Sapienza Università di Roma, 1999 and 2006; Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 2023; Università degli Studi di Milano, 2009, 2018, and 2020), and Portugal (Universidade de Lisboa, every year since 2010).

Elisabetta Bergamini, PhD in EC Law (Bologna, 2001), is a Full Professor of EU Law at the University of Udine (Italy). She previously worked as Researcher and Associate professor of International Law in the same University (2005-2020) and as Adjunct professor of EU Law in the University of Bologna (2001-2005). She has been coordinating an International Summer School on Consumer’s Rights and Market Regulation for eighteen years, in cooperation with colleagues from many Universities (i.a. Essex, DeMontfort, East Anglia, West Timisoara, Belgrade, Rijeka) and was awarded as Academic coordinator two jean Monnet Modules: one in European Family Law (2015-2018) and one on Consumer’s Rights and Market Regulation in the EU (still ongoing). She has been coordinating and involved in EU and national research projects and authored books, papers and book chapters published in Italy and abroad on EU Law, International Law and Private International Law.

David Engels, born 1979 in Verviers, Belgium, was professor and chair of Roman History at the University of Brussels (ULB) and currently works as free writer and lecturer for world history at the university ICES, France. Author and editor of numerous scholarly books and papers on ancient history, the philosophy of history and modern conservatism, he is chiefly known through his study Le déclin (2013), where he compared the current crisis of the West to the decline and fall of the Roman Republic in the 1st c. B.C., and through his books Renovatio Europae (2019), Que faire? (2019) and Défendre l'Europe (2024), all available in numerous translations.

Manca Erzetič is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute Nova Revija for Humanities and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New University in Ljubljana. Between 2019 and 2024 was a Vice Dean of the Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies. She has also a habilitation as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy by the Theological Faculty, University of Ljubljana. As a guest lecturer she lectured at various European universities (e.g. in Lugano, Barcelona, Bucharest, Budapest, Katowice, Macerata, Palma de Mallorca; in Moscow, etc.), as a visiting professor at the University of Zagreb and Leiden University. She is a member of the International Centre of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) and the Central and East European Society for Phenomenology (CEESP) executive board. Her main research interests are the hermeneutics of testimony and witnessing, ethics, existential phenomenology and their connections with cultural, historical, political, religious and literary approaches. She has published numerous scientific articles; edited three collective volumes. Her book Hermenevtika pričevanja [Hermeneutics of Testimony, 2023] was translated into Croatian in 2024. She has received three scientific and three international cultural awards.

Maxim Kantor is a painter, writer, philosopher and art historian. After graduating from the Moscow State University of Printing Art, he took the role in anti-soviet underground art and became known as watchful observer of modern society, sharp political critic, but at the same time - as a philosopher interpreting European complex historical process in its basis aesthetic criteria. In 1997 he represented Russia on 47 Biennale d’Arte di Venezia with the personal exhibition “Criminal Chronicle”. An honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford University, and an Academic of the Russian Academy of Art, he received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Turin and carried out researches activities and offered lectures at Notre Dame University (USA) and at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He held personal shows in museums around the world, among them: Frankfurt Staedel Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, Moscow State Tretyakov Gallery, Hannover Sprengel Museum, Bochum Museum, London British Museum, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Osnabrük Felix Nussbaum Museum, South Australian Gallery, Adelaida, Luxembourg National Museum, Saint-Petersburg State Russian Museum, Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, National Museum in Gdansk, etc. He collaborated with several art galleries (Eva Poll, Berlin; Asbaek, Copenhagen; Nierendorf, Berlin; Wittrock Kunsthandel, Dusseldorf-Berlin; Barry Fridman, New York). His novels were translated into German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish. He wrote also theater plays and collections of essays. His pictures could be also seen in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, Genscher Saal; the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome; Paris Saint Merry Church; Brussels cathedral; Common Room of Pembroke College of Oxford. Maxim Kantor lives and works in Germany, France and UK.

Christian Illies completed his studies in biology at the University of Konstanz (Diplom-Biologe, 1989) and pursued philosophy in Paris (ENS Fontenay/St Cloud; Diplôme de Philosophie, 1993) and at the University of Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning his DPhil in 1995 (supervision: Ralph C.S. Walker and Gabriele Taylor). From 1995 to 2002, he served as a research assistant (Hochschulassistent) at the University of Essen under Vittorio Hösle. He completed his Habilitation at the Technical University of Aachen in 2002 and became an Associate Professor (Universitairdocent) of philosophy and ethics of technology at the Technical University of Eindhoven (NL), where he co-organized a Center of Excellence for Ethics in Technology. In 2006, he was appointed KIVI-NIRIA Professor for Culture, Technology, and Architecture at TU Delft (NL). Since 2008, he has held the chair in philosophy (Practical Philosophy and Philosophy of Modernity) at Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg (Germany). In 2023, he became the founding co-director of the Institut Mensch & Ästhetik (Bamberg and Coburg), focusing on the built environment. His research interests encompass ethics, philosophy of nature, political anthropology, and aesthetics.

Elisabetta Nadalutti is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Udine (Italy), having previously been Assistant Professor at Forward College (Lisbon, Portugal). She earned her PhD from the University of Bath and has held research positions at leading institutions such as the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Université Grenoble Alpes, the University of Warwick, the Luxembourg National Research Fund, and the University of Lleida. A recipient of prestigious European fellowships—including MSCA-IF, MSCA-COFUND, and the María Zambrano programme—her work has been published in journals such as Geopolitics, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Journal of European Integration.  A scholar of European Studies, International Relations, Sustainable Development, and Cross-Border Governance, her attention spans from Europe to Asia, with a comparative focus on regional integration and the ethics of cooperation.  Her research has helped reshape debates on the ethical and political dimensions of cross-border cooperation. Alongside her academic work, she collaborates with the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière and the Association of European Border Regions, fostering dialogue between scholarship and policy-making.

Petr Osolsobě works as a professor of aesthetics and philosophy at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He also lectures on Shakespeare, Dante, and the fate of European culture at Janáček's Academy of Performing Arts, with special attention to elements of Aristotelian metaphysics and virtue theory.  Books: Kierkegaard's Aesthetics of Drama, Art and Virtue: An Approach to the Theory of Representation (in Czech).

Giuliana Parotto

Giangiacomo Vale is an Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at Niccolò Cusano University in Rome. His research focuses on modern and contemporary political philosophy, with particular attention to issues of sovereignty, federalism, and European integration. His studies investigate the relationship between identity, pluralism, and political order, exploring the transformations of democracy and the nation-state in the era of globalization. He has directed and participated in several international research projects dedicated to European democracy, multilevel governance, and raison d’état. His publications address topics in political theory, intellectual history, and the philosophy of Europe, with a consistent interest in the symbolic and cultural dimensions of the political and in the European personalist and federalist tradition.

Harald Wydra is Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge and Philpott Fellow in Politics at St Catharine’s College, where he has taught politics since 2003. After studies in Regensburg and Salamanca, he took a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence. He held visiting fellowships at the EHESS in Paris and the Australian National University in Canberra. He was Visiting Professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, the Cultural Institute at the University of Wrocław, and LUISS University in Rome. His books on Eastern European politics include Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition (Palgrave 2001), Communism and the Emergence of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe (co-edited with Alexander Wöll, Routledge, 2007). He also has written extensively on political anthropology, notably, Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (co-edited with Agnes Horvath and Bjørn Thomassen, Berghahn, 2015) Politics and the Sacred (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and the Handbook of Political Anthropology (co-edited with Bjørn Thomassen, Edward Elgar, 2018). He is a founding editor of International Political Anthropology (www.politicalanthropology.org).

LambertoZannier is an Ambassador and a retiredItalian career diplomat. He was OSCE Secretary General (2011-2017); UN Under-Secretary-General and Head of UN peacekeeping operation in Kosovo, UNMIK (2008-2011). Other high-level functions: High Level Expert, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (2020-2024); High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Hague (2017-2020);  Italian Representative at Executive Council of OPCW (2000-2002); Coordinator for EU foreign and defense policy in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-2008); Director, OSCE Conflict Prevention Center (2002-2006); Chairperson of the negotiations on the adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (1998-1999); Head of Disarmament, Arms Control and Cooperative Security at NATO (1991-1997). He holds a Law degree and an honorary doctorate in International and Diplomatic Sciences from the University of Trieste, Italy.