The Global Centre for Advanced Studies

Dr. Michael Loadenthal is the Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (Georgetown University), the Executive Director of the Prosecution Project, and serves as an Open-Source Intelligence investigator, and social movement trainer focused on security and defense.



Michael has served as a professor of political violence, terrorism, social movements, and sociology at Miami University, Georgetown University, George Mason University, University of Cincinnati, University of Malta's Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, and Jessup Correctional Institution, a maximum security men's prison in Baltimore county. Michael has served as the Dean's Fellow for George Mason's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, a Practitioner-In-Residence for Georgetown's Center for Social Justice, and a Research Fellow at Hebrew Union College's Center for the Study of Ethics & Contemporary Moral Problems.



Michael hold a Ph.D in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University, focusing his dissertation on a discursive, linguistic and strategic investigation of clandestine, insurrectionary politics. Michael also holds a master's degree in Terrorism Studies from the Centre for the Study of Terrorism & Political Violence (University of St. Andrews, Scotland), focusing his dissertation on a mixed-method exploration of clandestine direct action and economic sabotage. In 2006, Michael received a dual BA in International Peace & Conflict Resolution, and Women & Gender Studies (American University, Washington, DC).



Michael has published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and given more than 200 presentations and workshops worldwide. Michael's research has involved ethnographic studies with North American abortion providers, Jamaican Rastafarians, indigenous Mexican revolutionaries, British eco-terrorists, and Palestinian guerrillas amongst others. His work has involved global ethnographies, quantitative linguistic and discourse studies, large dataset statistical analyses, and action-orientated reflexive analysis.



He has published in a variety of venues including Critical Studies on Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, the Journal of Terrorism Research Journal of Applied Security Research, Global Society, Radical Criminology, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Theory in Action, Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Journal of Critical Animal Studies, and the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, which described his work as "the cutting edge of movement Studies" (2016, 10:2; 5). In addition, Michael serves editorial and directorship roles for several projects including Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements, Journal for the Study of Radicalism and Peace and Conflict Studies Journal.

BIO

I’m a multidisciplinary writer whose work explores film, philosophy, and mysticism using poetry, essay, and visual mediums to make formally experimental work. My full-length books are G (Futurepoem, 2018) and Wave Archive (Book*hug, 2019). I’m also the author of several artist books and chapbooks. Recent poetic and theoretical writing has appeared in Artforum,

American Chordata, BOMB, Granta, Gulf Coast, Hyperallergic, The Quarterless Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, SF MOMA’s Open Space, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. My work has been reviewed in The Yale Review, The Chicago Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. I’ve taught courses on writing, literature, media, and philosophy at various

institutions including Northeastern University, Saint Peters University, and independently.



Additionally, I’ve been a visiting critic at Parsons School of Design and The Art Institute of Cincinnati. I gained several years of curatorial and editorial experience while working in small and experimental publishing communities in Brooklyn and I’m passionate about experimental and hybrid forms of writing, publishing, and teaching. I currently edit the multidisciplinary online journal Asphalte Magazine.



RESEARCH AND WRITING INTERESTS

I’m interested in the edges where poetry and philosophy meet. My books explore the technologically mediated body and language as a material medium. Formally, they’re concerned with iteration, repetition, and play. I’m currently at work on a series of books and multimedia projects that focus on intersections of experimental/horror cinema, medieval mysticism and theories of light, and analog and digital mediation and spectatorship.



Other research interests and areas of experience include film and media theory; philosophies of horror; 21st-century experimental poetry and publishing practices; hybrid forms of writing; process-based writing; angelology; Medieval Christian mysticism.

Keith Faulkner, PhD (Warwick) has studied the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze for over twenty years. He translated (2001) the two essays Deleuze wrote in 1945. After doing his PhD on Deleuze’s philosophy of time at the University of Warwick, he published Deleuze and the Three Syntheses of Time (2006) and The Force of Time: An Introduction to Deleuze though Proust (2008), which have been translated into Korean. He is currently working on a book on Deleuze’s practical philosophy.

Steven DeLay is a writer and philosopher living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. An Old Member of Christ Church, Oxford, he is the author of a number of recent books: Elijah Newman Died Today (2022), Everything (2022), Faint Not (2022), In the Spirit (2021), Before God (2020), and Phenomenology in France (2019). He is also the editor of Life Above the Clouds: Philosophy in the Films of Terrence Malick (2023) and the editor of Finding Meaning: Philosophy in Crisis (2023) based on the series of online essays, “Finding Meaning,” at 3:16 AM. He teaches in post-Kantian philosophy, with a focus in the phenomenological and existential traditions.





Psychology Department Chair



Julie Reshe is a leading researcher in psychoanalysis and professor of philosophy at the Global Center for Advanced Studies where she directs the Institute of Psychoanalysis. She completed her Ph.D. under the supervision of Alenka Zupančič at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She works at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, her research topics include sexuality, emotions and cognition, childhood, and trauma studies.



Reshe teaches at the School of Advanced Studies in Russia

Dejan Lukić serves as a professor, tutor, and vice-chancellor of GCAS. He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 2007. He is a scholar and writer with ten years of teaching experience in art schools, liberal arts colleges and research universities in the USA. These include Reed College, Rutgers University, The New School, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts in New York, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. He has given talks at Sarah Lawrence College, Montclair State University, and Babson College, and in different art galleries in New York City.



He conceptualized more than a dozen undergraduate and graduate courses and served as a thesis advisor to numerous students who worked on projects crossing the boundaries of anthropology, philosophy, and art. He has published two books: "Phantom Territoriality" (Bloomsbury, 2014), dealing with the aesthetics of terrorism, and "Elemental Disappearances" (Punctum, 2016), which is a series of thought-images on contemporary art. He is currently writing a trilogy called “Emanations" that covers themes of charisma, enchantment, nature, light and shadows, and multi-ontologies. The individual volumes are titled “Charismatic Image”, “Its Total Radiance”, and “Archipelagic Surge”. You can see some of his shorter writing on his academia page: https://sva.academia.edu/DejanLukic



Furthermore, all of Dejan's work is informed by future pedagogies of creativity. To this end he runs an art and ecology Summer school on the Adriatic island in Croatia, where intricate bioregional models inform all learning activities, and where microclimate operates as an integral part of academic programing. This approach is applicable to any microclimate in the world and as such has a potential to mark the future of interdisciplinary learning: http://www.stepnotbeyond.com



https://gcas.ie/dejan-lukic

Associate Professor of Philosophy & Psychoanalysis



I am a member of the class of 1979 at the Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, a secondary school that is dedicated to the principles of non sibi. I have education and training (3 doctorates and post-doctoral professional training) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Florida, the University of New Mexico, San Diego State University, The University of San Diego, the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute, and Harvard University’s Program in Mediation & Negotiation. I have taught at the university level for over thirty years in both U.S. and European schools.



I am currently studying mathematics, set theory, and category theory as they relate to a critical theory of political and social liberation. Currently, I am a Professor and Dean of Faculty at the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute & Society. I am a Researcher of Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology & Critical Theory at the Global Center for Advanced Studies— GCAS College Dublin.



I have also published several theoretical books in psychoanalysis, phenomenology, critical theory; and several works in literary fiction and poetry. My most recent book publication is a 2-volume work, with Nazarita Goldhammer entitled A New Human Anthropology. I supervise academic and clinical professionals in their work, give professional consultations, and regularly speak all over the world. Together with Goldhammer, we have built the Non-Violent Design Institute, where I serve as Chief Scientist, at which we study and help others implement innovate design that is based on mathematics, phenomenology, and principles of non-violent encounters with the non-human world.

Firoze Madatally Manji (born 1950) is a Kenyan activist with more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health, human rights, teaching, publishing and political organizing.



Firoze Manji, has more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health and human rights; he is the founder and publisher of Daraja Press, including host of the online interview series Organising in the time of Covid-19. He is Adjunct Professor at the Institute of African Studies and Contract Instructor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada,; Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin; Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford (2001-2016) and, and Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of the prize-winning pan African social justice newsletter and website Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press and the founder and former executive director (1997-2010) of Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organisation with bases in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and the UK. He has published widely on health, human rights, development and politics. He is co-editor, with Sokari Ekine, of African Awakenings: The Emerging Revolutions and co-editor with Bill Fletcher Jr, of Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral. He is a member of the editorial review board of Global Critical Caribbean Thought and member of the editorial board of Nokoko, Journal of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. He served as a member of the Permanent People’ Tribunal on the Role of TNCs in Southern Africa (2018-9). He is Senior research fellow of the Global Centre for Advanced Studies and a founding member of Global University for Sustainability. He is a former board member of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and of Greenpeace Africa.

Clayton Crockett is Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of Derrida After the End of Writing (2017), Deleuze Beyond Badiou (2013), Radical Political Theology (2011), and Religion, Politics, and the Earth (with Jeffrey W. Robbins, 2012), among others. He is a co-author, along with Creston Davis, Slavoj Zizek, and Jeffrey W. Robbins, of the book series “Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture” for Columbia University Press. He is working on a philosophy of energy.

As an early innovator in the field of electronic, telematic and media arts, Kenneth Fields has developed repertoire, curriculum, software and produced networked music concerts while cultivating a wide community of network and electronic music/art practitioners. Ken’s experience ranges from performer/composer, Ph.D in Media Arts, professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and Canada Research Chair in Telemedia Arts. Ken currently is an Adjunct Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and Dean of Phonosophy at the Global Center of Advanced Studies (GCAS).



https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-fields-2351233/

Senior Research Fellow

I am a trained philosopher with expertise in phenomenology, continental philosophy, theories of embodiment and aesthetics. I am passionate about contemporary advances in technology and their impact on human self-understanding, art and culture. Being convinced that philosophical knowledge matters not only within academia, but also to a wider public I also engage in co-operations with tech firms and public presentations. Given the accelerated speed of technological invention that is changing our bodies, minds and life-worlds I propose the necessity of a public and interdisciplinary discourse.



In that regard, I take a stance for a phenomenological perspective that does not lose sight of the experiential and ethical aspects of new technologies. This is the reason why I take fashion, cinema and art to be important topics within the larger scope of philosophy of technology. I discuss these cultural practices against the backdrop of theories of embodiment in order to understand how perception and movement are engineered through technology and how artistic practices can shed light on this process.



I am not only crazy about technology, but also about food and culture. Food, dining and cooking are both intellectual and bodily passions of mine, which you can follow in my micro-blog in the food and culture section.



I am currently Research Professor and Foreign Expert at Shanxi University Taiyuan, China and Visiting Professor at University of Kassel, Germany. I regularly teach Philosophy at Leuphana University Lueneburg. I received my PhD from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in 2009 with a thesis on Zeiterfahrung und Ontologie. Perspektiven moderner Zeitphilosophie (Experience and Ontology of Time. Perspectives of Modern Philosophy of Time).



In 2009 I was invited as a guest professor to teach aesthetics at the Bauhaus University Weimar and in 2010 appointed as Juniorprofessor at Leuphana University. My latest research has been awarded two prestigious fellowships at University of Konstanz and at MECS, Leuphana University, both financed by the German Research Association (DFG). Follow me on Academia and find me on Orcid.



https://yvonnefoerster.com/

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is on the faculty of the GCAS Institute of Psychoanalysis.



She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (2011) and Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis (2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (2013). She teaches at the New School and supervises doctoral students in clinical psychology at the City University of New York. Webster teaching in the GCAS Psychoanalysis Programme.

Founder and director of The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) and the Chancellor and CEO of GCAS College Dublin



Creston Davis, (PhD University of Virginia, MTS Duke University) is the founder and director of The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) and the Chancellor and CEO of GCAS College Dublin. Davis was promoted to Associate Professor at Rollins College (2012) and has published books with The MIT Press, Columbia and Duke University Press.



He is the creator of and co-edits the Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics and Culture series, an academic book series published by Columbia University Press.



He currently researches future consciousness, sustainability, and advanced technologies.



https://gcas.ie/creston-davis

GCAS College Board of Trustees and a Professor of Science and Religion



Professor Shaun Henson (D.Phil, Oxford University; M.Div, Duke University) is a member of GCAS College Board of Trustees and a Professor of Science and Religion. Dr. Henson is a lecturer in Science & Religion at Oxford University.



University of Oxford

https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-shaun-henson#/

Rocco Gangle is a Professor of Philosophy at Endicott College. He is the author of Francois Laruelle’s Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction and Guide (EUP 2013) and Diagrammatic Immanence: Category Theory and Philosophy (EUP 2016), co-author of Iconicity and Abduction (Springer 2017), and co-editor of Superpositions: Laruelle and the Humanities (Rowman and Littlefield 2017). His research focuses on semiotics, diagrammatic logic, metaphysics, and political philosophy.

Francisco González Castro (1984) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy & the Arts, the Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, and the Director of The Global Center for Advanced Studies -- Latino América (Santiago, Chile). He is an artist, curator, and researcher. B.A. in Art (2006) M.A. in Arts (2009) and Ph.D. in Arts (2017) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.



As an artist, he has developed his work since 2005 to date with exhibitions and presentations, both individual and collective, in Chile (Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso, Concepción and Valdivia) as well as abroad (Sweden, Germany, Spain, France and the United States). In addition, he has done various projects as curator, focused on establishing relationships between artists of different generations around issues of art and society. In his works and research he approaches social and political themes around the power and reflections of the usefulness of art as an element of concrete change in society and within the contingency, positioning the concept of the political-artistic. Highlights are the projects: “In between / art y society” (2012), “In between / art and contingency” (2014) and “Layers of Disappearing: 1002 of 7000” (2016). He has also presented his research in various congresses and magazines in Chile and abroad. Recently published the book “Performance Art in Chile: histories, processes and discourses”.



He has worked in different educational institutions in vulnerable contexts, as an assistant for various undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Faculty of Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and as a professor at  the Universidad UNIACC.

My work is focused on the intersections between religion, theology, and culture, with a particular emphasis on the impact and interplay of contemporary digital life on religion and belief (particularly Western Christianity). I am particularly interested in religion where it is least obvious and in cultural clinamens- the behaviour and phenomena that escape our categorizing and thus provide an opportunity for reframing how we think and approach life.

www.leapingkoi.com



David has helped over 30k leaders from the Fortune 500 around the world from the shop floor to the boardroom make progress on their Leadership Journey; reducing ineffective habits, releasing trapped value, and creating more deliberate impact along the way. David is a featured coach in the Marshall Goldsmith documentary "The Earned Life". Starting his career in sales, he has held several management positions in both North America and Asia.



https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadership-coach-david/

Todd is committed to the idea that theoretical exploration of questions about existence, the psyche, and society can contribute in tangible ways to the creative process. His classes often focus on major theoretical figures like Hegel, Marx, or Freud and delve into how their ideas manifest themselves in the most important films, television series, and other media texts. He has written books on comedy, capitalism, and various filmmakers, such Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy, Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, and The Impossible David Lynch. His work on psychoanalytic film theory has provided a new way of thinking about the relationship between the spectator and the filmic image as founded on desire rather than identification. The unifying thread of all these projects is the belief that theory has the ability to shed fresh light on what seems firmly established and that it can enrich both our lives and our creative endeavors. This is reflected in classes such as “Noir Marx,” “Existentialism and the Teen Film,” “The Psychoanalytic François Truffaut,” and “Atemporal Cinema.”