Care, Agency, Repair, Engagement in Alternative Modern(c)ities (CARE)

• Stephen Forcer, Professor of French avant-garde, Head of School, Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow
• Mehita Iqani, Professor in Africa Media Studies, Chair in Science Communication, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Ileana Marin, Associate Professor habil. in Visual and Cultural Studies, Head of Doctoral School of Research in Space, Image, Text and Territory, University of Bucharest
• Kristina Fjelkestam, Professor of Gender Studies, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, Stockholm University
• Mina Karavanta, Associate Professor habil. of Theory, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, and Global English Literatures, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
• Stamatina Dimakopoulou, Assistant Professor in American Literature and Culture, Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
• Angelos Evangelou, Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies, Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
• Raluca Bibiri, Assistant Professor in Visual and Gender Studies, Center of Excellence in Image Studies, University of Bucharest
• Erica O’Neill, Assistant Professor, Department of Drama, University of Glasgow.
• Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, Director of the Gender Research and Documentation Centre, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone
• Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Associate Professor, Head of the Drama Department, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Stephen Forcer is a Professor of French at the University of Glasgow, where he is also Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. From a teaching and research background in Dada and surrealism, he is currently interested in the relationship between social problems and ‘avant-garde’ notions such as absurdity, incongruity, and the relationship between dark humour and violence. His involvement in this CIVIS course also reflects his general interest in the role played by language and culture in facilitating policy, meaning and progress in responding to major problems. 

Kristina Fjelkestam has a PhD in Comparative Literature and is Professor in Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research profile is based in feminist cultural theory with a historical focus. She is currently interested in the research field of queer temporality studies, which combines queer theory with critical historiography. Previously she has pursued studies of cultural memory (i.e. what and how a society chooses to remember), as well as applied various research perspectives on the theory and practice of literary history - especially in the 18th and 20th centuries.

Mehita Iqani is professor and Chair in Science Communication at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. She is the author and editor of several books on media, consumer culture, luxury, waste, and the global south. Her current research agenda focuses on action-research and communications on social justice issues: climate and the environment, including urban sustainability, renewable energy and activism; health and happiness, including vaccine cultures, eco-anxiety, waste and pollution; equity and inequality, integrating race and gender in the scientific public, ethical consumption and rural communities. Her aim is to support critical research that brings media and cultural studies approaches into issues-driven science communication research. 

Ileana Marin is Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies of the University of Bucharest, where she is also Chair of the Doctoral School “Space, Image, Text, Territory”. She has published books on tragic myths, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and on Victorian aesthetics of erasure and has written extensively on the de-humanizing power of art and the artistic legacy of communism as well as on the materiality of literary, pictorial, and graphic texts. Winner of several research grants, she has explored interdisciplinary dialogues between text and image and the transformation of artworks into cultural icons.

Mina Karavanta is Associate Professor of Theory, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, and Global English Literatures, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She co-edited Interculturality and Gender and Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid and published in journals such as boundary 2, Callaloo, Feminist Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Symplokē. She has participated in Travelling Concepts (ATHENA) and Behind the Looking-Glass (AHRC). She is co-founder and co-editor Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies. She has given invited talks in the US, Europe, the Caribbean and Australia. She has launched the CIVIS project, PostRacial Trans-Modernities and participates in the BIP project CARE.

Professor Marié-Heleen Coetzee lectures in Applied Drama and directing at the School of Arts’s Drama Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She served as Head of the Drama Department for a decade and as Chair of the Arts Cluster for four years. Her research centers on the use of drama and theatre-based methodologies in cross-disciplinary contexts and embodied pedagogies in performance praxis. She presents guest lectures, and papers workshops at national and international institutions and conferences, acts as an examiner at various institutions, publishes in academic journals, and presents creative work on various platforms.

Stamatina Dimakopoulou teaches US literature and culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has been Fulbright Visiting Scholar at New York University and has guest-lectured at Paris-Nanterre. She has published on transatlantic avant-gardes across literature and the visual arts. She is a founding member and co-editor of Synthesis, an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies. She has co-founded Transitive Modernities, and participates in the CIVIS projects, CARE, and PostRacial Trans-Modernities. With Vassilis Vlastaras (Athens School of Fine Arts), she co-organised practice-based workshops to be followed by an exhibition at Atoposcvc. Currently working on a manuscript on home/lessness.

Angelos Evangelou is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Since 2010, he was Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature of the University of Kent. His research focuses on the border between madness and reason. Publications include Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida (2017) and articles in academic journals. Since 2015 he is a Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy, and is an Honorary member of staff of the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Kent. He also participates in the CIVIS project on PostRacial Trans-Modernities and the BIP project Care.

Raluca Bibiri is Associate Professor of Film and Women's Studies at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies, University of Bucharest. She has authored two books on the concept of femininity in philosophy, psychoanalysis, culture and the arts. Her ongoing research projects focus on intersectional posthumanist methodologies exploring social exclusion and institutionalized forms of knowledge and power. She is actively involved in the exchange between academia and society as a documentary filmmaker, reflecting on the instrumentality of the historical archives for the production of new forms of knowledge about the past, through a wider, more inclusive perspective.

Aisha Fofana Ibrahim is an African feminist scholar and gender equality and social inclusion advocate based at the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. She is currently involved in a number of gender related research projects that include artisanal mining, access to justice, gender based violence and disability (Liliane Fonds). She is an active member of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone and a lead gender specialist in the country providing technical support to the state government and national and international non-governmental organizations in the area of women’s empowerment and gender analysis. 

Erica O’Neill completed her PhD on the theatre of Tristan Tzara (University of Glasgow, 2020). She is currently a Lecturer attached to the Department of Drama at the Glasgow, and is working on a book version of her thesis for publication with Peter Lang. With Kathryn Brown, she is working on a special issue of Nottingham French Studies dedicated to Dada. Separately, she is also working with Stephen Forcer on a co-edited special issue of Dada/Surrealism titled ‘Approximate Humanism: Tristan Tzara’. Her contribution to this BIP course will focus on avant-garde activism.