James Alison, Theologian (Imitatio)
James Alison is a Catholic Priest, theologian and author. He earned his doctorate from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. James has lived in many countries and works as an itinerant preacher, lecturer and retreat giver. His professional life has been dedicated to the interpretation for theology of the thought of René Girard, and he is a long-standing COV&R member and participant. Over the years James has firmly but gently faced down Church authority on matters gay and lived to tell the tale. His writing can be accessed here. When not on the road he lives in Madrid.
Mark Rogin Anspach, Anthropologist (Marcel Mauss Institute / Imitatio)
A graduate of Harvard, with a doctorate in literature from Stanford and in ethnology from EHESS, Mark Anspach was for many years a researcher at CREA (École Polytechnique). He is the author of Vengeance in Reverse (MSUP, 2017) and the editor of The Oedipus Casebook (MSUP, 2020) as well as Oedipus Unbound, a collection of essays by René Girard (Stanford, 2004). His French publications include Œdipe mimétique (L’Herne, 2010), Cahier René Girard (L’Herne, 2008) and À charge de revanche. Figures élémentaires de la réciprocité (Seuil, 2002). For more information, see his website.
Marinela Blaj, Anthropologist (University of Alexandru Ioan Cuza)
Marinela Blaj is the director of the Romanian branch of The Schuman Centre for European Studies and visiting professor at the University of the Nations, where she teaches Comparative Worldviews, Introduction in Epistemology and Causes of Poverty. She holds a doctoral degree in ancient history earned with Summa cum Laude. Her field of expertise is Punic history, and her book, “Carthage: the model-obstacle,” is about to be published in Romanian. She is the translator of two of René Girard’s books into Romanian: “La route antique des hommes pervers” and “La voix méconnue du réel”.
Elisabetta Brighi, Lecturer in International Relations (University of Westminster)
Elisabetta Brighi is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Westminster. Her main research interests are theories of violence, particularly mimetic approaches to violence, and the link between emotions, politics and violence. She has published widely on this topic, including the book The sacred and the political (Bloomsbury 2016) and the article ‘The Globalisation of Resentment’ (Millennium, 2016). Elisabetta is also a foreign policy expert who has been writing and advising public bodies on Europe’s relations with the Middle East, particularly on questions of democracy, ethics, and accountability. Her latest interventions can be found on Open Democracy, OrientXXI, and Al Jazeera.
Barbara Carnevali, Philosopher (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences – EHESS)
Barbara Carnevali is Full Professor in Philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Her work is centered on “Social Aesthetics”. The core of this approach is the relationship between social forms and aesthetic forms. Another major part of her research focuses on philosophical modernity with a particular interest in the relationship of self and society, and the tension between recognition and authenticity. Publications :”Romanticism and Recognition. Rousseau and the Modern Self” (French edition Geneva 2012, English translation forthcoming for Columbia University Press), “Social Appearances. A Philosophy of Display and Prestige” (Columbia University Press, 2020).
Benoît Chantre, Editor, essayist and president of ARM (ARM / Imitatio)
Benoît Chantre is a fellow of the Imitatio Foundation, an associate member of the Centre international d’études de la philosophie française contemporaine (CIEPFC, Rue d’Ulm), and president of the Association Recherches Mimétiques.
He has contributed to various journals, written on contemporary artists and organized university colloquia or writers’ meetings. His research focuses on the works of Bergson, Girard, Levinas, Péguy and Simone Weil. He published with René Girard in 2007 Achever Clausewitz.
Vincent Delecroix, Philosopher and novelist (Practical School of Advanced Studies)
Writer and philosopher, specialist in Kierkegaard and philosophy of religion, Vincent Delecroix is director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études. Also a novelist, he was a resident at the French Academy in Rome (Villa Medici) and received the Prix de l’Académie Française for his book Tombeau d’Achille and his entire literary work. Including his publications : Singulière philosophie. Essai sur Kierkegaard (Le Félin, 2006), Ce n’est point ici le pays de la vérité. Introduction à la philosophie de la religion (Le Félin, 2015), Apocalypse du politique (Desclées De Brouwer, 2016), La Preuve de l’existence de Dieu, (Actes Sud, 2004), La Chaussure sur le toit (Gallimard, 2007), Tombeau d’Achille, (Gallimard, 2008), Ascension (Gallimard,2017).
Chantal Delsol, Philosopher, member of the Institut de France (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences)
Professor emeritus of the universities in Philosophy. Author of works of philosophy, essays and novels, translated into some twenty languages. Regular columnist at the Figaro. Member of the Institute (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences).
Paul Dumouchel, Philosopher (Ritsumeikan University / Université du Québec) and vice-president of ARM
Paul Dumouchel is Canadian and until recently professor at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, where he thought political philosophy and philosophy of science. He is the author of Emotions (Seuil, 1999) The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays (2014) and The Barren Sacrifice (2015) both at Michigan State University Press. With Reiko Gotoh he edited Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Social Bonds as Freedom (Berghahn Books, 2015). His most recent book, with Luisa Damiano, is Vivre avec les robots (Seuil, 2016) The English translation Living with Robots (Harvard University Press) came out in 2017 and the Italian and Korean translation in 2019. He is presently Associate Professor at the department of philosophy of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Philosopher (Stanford University)
Jean-Pierre Dupuy is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, and (by courtesy) of Political Science, Stanford University. He is a member of the French Academy of Technology, He was the first chair of the Ethics Committee of the French High Authority on Nuclear Safety and Security.
He is author of numerous major works, including, in English, The Mechanization of the Mind (Princeton University Press, 2000); On the Origins of Cognitive Science (The MIT Press, 2009); The Mark of the Sacred (Stanford University Press, 2013); Economy and the Future. A Crisis of Faith (Michigan State University Press, 2014); A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis (Michigan State University Press, 2015); How to Think About Catastrophe. Toward a Theory of Enlightened Doomsaying (Michigan State University Press, 2022); The War That Must Not Occur (Stanford University Press, in print.)
Sandor Goodhart, Professor of English and Jewish Studies (Purdue University)
Sandor ‘Sandy’ Goodhart is a Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Purdue University’s Department of English. He served as the Director of the Jewish Studies Program (1997-2002), of the Philosophy and Literature Program (2005), and of the Classical Studies Program (2007-2011). He is a founding board member of the North American Levinas Society (founded with his students at Purdue), the former President of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (2004-2007), and the author of over ninety essays (including essays on Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow). Including his publications : Möbian Nights: Reading Literature and Darkness (2017), The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical (2014), Sacrifice, Scripture, and Substitution (2011; co-edited with Ann Astell), For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and Truth (2009).
Simon De Keukelaere, Theologian and linguist (Catholic archdiocese of Vienna)
Fr. Simon De Keukelaere FSO currently serves as the main university chaplain and head of the department for universities and colleges of the Catholic archdiocese of Vienna in Austria. Fr. Simon is a linguist and a theologian and has written articles and held talks in many languages on René Girard and mimetic theory.
Trevor Cribben Merrill, Professor of French Literature and Novelist (Imitatio)
Trevor Cribben Merrill sits on the Research Committee of Imitatio: Integrating the Human Sciences. He studied literature at Yale and the Ecole normale supérieure and in 2011 received his Ph.D. in French from UCLA, USA, where he was a Chancellor’s Fellow. He has co-edited La Conversion de l’art (2010), a book of essays by René Girard, and collaborated on Psychopolitics (2012), a dialogue with French psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian. He is the translator of René Girard’s book When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture). He is the author of the novel Minor Indignities (2021). He is the author of an essay on Milan Kundera and contributes a regular column on current events and literature to the French literary magazine L’Atelier du roman.
Christine Orsini, Philosopher vice-president of the ARM
Christine Orsini is a professor of philosophy and Vice-President of the Association Recherches mimétiques (ARM). She contributed to René Girard et le problème du mal (Grasset, 1982) and to the Cerisy colloquium “Autour de René Girard” in 1983. She is also the author of La Pensée de René Girard (Retz, 1984) and of an introduction to the thought of René Girard (René Girard, “Que sais-je ?” PUF, 2018).
Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Psychiatrist and essayist
Jean-Michel Oughourlian is the former chief of psychiatry at the American Hospital of Paris and a former professor of clinical psychopathology at the Sorbonne. He collaborated with René Girard on Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (1978) and has authored several books on psychiatry, neuroscience, and mimetic theory, including The Genesis of Desire (2008), Psychopolitics (2012), and The Mimetic Brain (2016).
Wolfgang Palaver, Philosopher and theologian (University of Innsbruck and COV&R)
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck. From 2007 to 2011, he was president of the “Colloquium on Violence and Religion”. His recent book is Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness: Reflecting on Violence and Religion with René Girard (2020). Previously he published René Girard’s Mimetic Theory (2013). He is the co-editor of Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media (2005), The European Wars of Religion (2016), The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion (2017), and Mimetic Theory and World Religions (2018). In Fall 2018, he was a member of the research workshop on religion & violence at the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) in Princeton. In Spring 2021, he conducted a research project on Gandhi’s nonviolence at The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.
Martha Reineke, Philosopher and President of COV&R (University of Northern Iowa)
Martha J. Reineke (Ph.D. Vanderbilt University) is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and World Religions at the University of Northern Iowa and President of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Her publications include Sacrificed Lives: Kristeva on Women and Violence (Indiana University Press, 1997) and Intimate Domain: Desire, Trauma, and Mimetic Theory (Michigan State University Press, 2014). She is the editor, with David Goodman, of Ana-María Rizzuto and the Psychoanalysis of Religion: The Road to the Living God (Lexington Books, 2017).
Camille Riquier, Philosopher, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the ICP
Camille Riquier is professor and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Paris, member of the committee of the journal Esprit as well as of the journal Philosophie. Laureate of the Académie française for his book Archéologie de Bergson, which received the Prix La Bruyère. He is co-editor of the Annales Bergsonniennes. Including his other publications : Nous ne savons plus croire (Desclée de Brouwer, 2020), Métamorphoses de Descartes. Le secret de Sartre( Gallimard, 2022
Jérome Thélot, Professor of Literature, essayist and translator (University of Lyon)
Jérôme Thélot is Professor Emeritus of French Literature at the University of Lyon 3. His latest publications: Géricault. Genealogy of Painting, L’Atelier contemporain, 2021; Painting and Screaming. From Botticelli to Francis Bacon, L’Atelier contemporain, 2021; L’origine du poème et ce qu’il peut, Invenit, 2023. He edited, in collaboration, Yves Bonnefoy’s Œuvres poétiques in the Pléiade collection (Gallimard, 2023).
Andreas Wilmes, Philosopher and Director of the Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (PJCV) (Pázmány Péter Catholic University – Budapest)
Andreas Wilmes is Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Researcher at CERLIS. He is also Editor of the Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (PJCV). His research aims to shed light on contemporary debates on serial murder using concepts from the philosophy of science. Since 2016, part of his research also aims to confront René Girard’s anthropology with Western philosophy (particularly Hegelianism and post-Hegelianism). Including his publications :« Portrait of René Girard as a post-Hegelian», The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (n°1, 2017), Figures Philosophiques du Conflit, L’Harmattan, 2015.
Frédéric Worms, Philosopher and director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Rue d’Ulm.
Frédéric Worms is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and has served as a member of the National Consultative Ethics Committee and Director of the International Center for the Study of Contemporary French Philosophy. He develops his « critical vitalism » both in the history of philosophy, the work of Henri Bergson and a general notion of “moment”, and through contemporary issues in ethics, politics, and democracy. Among his publications : La Philosophie en France au xxe siècle. Moments (Gallimard, 2009), Revivre, Flammarion, Sens propre 2012, Champs 2016, Les Maladies chroniques de la démocratie, (Desclée de Brouwer, 2017), Vivre en temps réel (Bayard, 2021).