Europa : myth as metaphor

Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken

Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken is Research Coordinator and Senior Researcher at the Research Center for Material Culture at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen in the Netherlands. Founded and headed by Wayne Modest, the role of the RCMC is to critically interrogate the historical legacies of "the ethnographic museum." She has a Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies, and engages particularly with: Haitian Studies, through which she is also versed in scholarship about the Caribbean Enlightenment; the relationship among the French, Haitian, and US revolutions; the départements d'outre-mer; Jewish Studies ; and poverty studies. She is author among others of: Spirit Possession in French, Haitian, and Vodou Thought: An Intellectual History (2015) and the co-edited The Haiti Exception: Anthropology and the Predicament of Narrative (2016). Recently, she has published articles on Caribbbean art and on the novels of Igiaba Scego. Institutionally, she has engaged two career tracks in academe and another in cultural diplomacy, at the French Embassy as well as at the Québec Government House in Washington, D.C. and NYC. She is also a graduate of: Critical Muslim Studies: Decolonial Struggles and Liberation Theologies and Black European Summer School.

Laurent Gaudé

Born in 1972, Laurent Gaudé studied modern literature and theater in Paris. His first play, Onysos le Furieux, was published in 1997. In 2002, his novel La Mort du roi Tsongor won the Prix Goncourt des lycéens. Two years later, in 2004, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his next novel, Le Soleil des Scorta. Since then, he has published numerous plays, novels, collections of poetry and short stories. His long poem Nous, L'Europe, banquet des peuples (European Book Prize 2019) has been adapted for the stage by Roland Auzet for the 2019 Avignon Festival. Her work, translated worldwide, is published by Actes Sud.

Oksana Mitrofanova

• January 2014 to present - Senior Research Fellow, Institute of World History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (From March 2022 refugee in Paris)
• pril 2004 to December 2013 - Senior Research Fellow, Institute of World Economy and International Relations National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• March-May 2022, October 2021, 2008 to 2011 (four times for two or three months) Visiting Associate Professor University Paris II Pantheon-Assas, Paris, France
• 2002 - PhD in Political Science
• Reports and lectures in international meetings and conferences (Brussels, Budapest, Kyiv, Olsztyn, Paris, la Roche-Guyon, Warsaw)

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani was born in Iran, raised in Uganda, and educated in the UK and the US. She has taught literature in universities and colleges in North America, the Middle East, and West Africa, as well as France and is the author of fiction and non-fiction, published in several languages. Her latest novel Us&Them/"Eux&Nous" is a satire about the Iranian diaspora. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani currently lives in Strasbourg and works as a narrator of novels and poetry for a text/audio aligned program on-line called WholeReader.

Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel is an award-winning British poet with close links to Greece, science, classical music and wildlife conservation. She has published twelve poetry collections, shortlisted for all major UK prizes, most recently Beethoven Variations; and We are All from Somewhere Else, on migration. Her latest novel Daughters of the Labyrinth is set on Crete where she has had close connections all her life. Non-fiction includes books on reading poetry, Greek tragedy, wild tiger conservation, and a study of rock music and Greek myth. She is Professor of Poetry at King's College London, and Fellow of Royal Society of Literature. www.ruthpadel.com

Catarina Vaz Pinto

Deputy Mayor for Culture of Lisbon City Council 2009-2021, she is graduated in Law by Portuguese Catholic University, Lisbon: Post-Graduate in European Studies, College of Europe, Bruges: Cultural Manager and independent consultant in the areas of policies and cultural development, cultural and artistic training (2005- 2009). Executive Manager of the Gulbenkian Creativity and Artistic Creation Program / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2003 - 2007) ; Consultant for Quaternaire Portugal SA, for the area of projects and cultural policies (2001-2005) ; executive Manager and teacher: Post-Graduation in "Cities Cultural Management" -lnstitute for the Development of Business Management- INDEG/ISCTE (2001-2004) and cofounder of the Cultural Dance Association "Forum Dança", of which she was Executive Manager (1991-1995). She was State Secretary for Culture (1997-2000) and assistant to the Minister of Culture (1995-1997).