Main Speakers

The Speakers

• Alparslan Acıkgenc
  
  

  Alparslan Acikgenc is professor of philosophy at Fatih University, Istanbul. He obtained his BA at Ankara University, M.A. at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He taught at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey as Assistant and Associate Professor in the department of philosophy. Then he served as professor of philosophy at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He joined Fatih University in 1999 where still serves as the Dean of College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Acikgenc published many articles in various professional journals on comparative philosophy, history of philosophy and philosophy of science. He has published the following books: Being and Existence in Satre and Heidegger: A Comparative Ontology (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic thought and Civilization, 1993); Islamic Science: Towards a Definition (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic thought and Civilization, 1996); Scientific Thought and its Burdens (Istanbul: Fatih University Publications, 2000); Philosophy of Knowledge (in Turkish), (Istanbul: Insan Yayinlari, 1992); Scientific Tradition in Islam (in Turkish) (Istanbul: ISAM, 2006); Islamic Scientific Tradition in History (in Turkish in the press). He also has books on epistemology and is currently working on a comprehensive history of philosophy in Islamic civilization.

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• Patrick Baert
  
  

  Patrick Baert is Fellow of Selwyn College and University Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He developed a new perspective on philosophy of social science, inspired by American neo-pragmatism and Continental hermeneutics. Amongst his publications are Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism (2005), Social Theory in the Twentieth Century (1998) and Time, Self and Social Being (1992). He was Vice-President for Publications of the European Sociological Association and President of its Social Theory Network.

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• Alice Craven
  
  

  Alice Craven teaches in Comparative Literature and is FirstBridge Coordinator at the American University of Paris, where she co-hosted the 4th International Conference for New Directions in the Humanities last year, on the special theme: Discourses Veiled and Unveiled: The Public Intellectual and Islam in New Directions for the Humanities. She has collaborated extensively in the development of interdisciplinary pedagogy and curricular reform in the Humanities, with a focus in the past few years on the building and teaching of a senior capstone course entitled Viewing and Reviewing Islam. She is currently working on a book project about the “act of reading” at risk in the humanities, and has recently given talks on the life and work of French slam artist Abd Al Malik.

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• Selçuk Esenbel
  
  

  Selçuk Esenbel is a professor of History at Boğaziçi University. She obtained her Ph.D. at the Columbia University. She has taught at the Department of History, Boğaziçi University, where she acted as chairperson between 1994 and 2003. Since 2005 Selçuk Esenbel is also teaching part-time at Fatih University (Department of History). Professor Esenbel published many articles in various professional journals on history of Asia with particular focus on Japanese history. She has published the following books: Even the Gods Rebel: Peasants of Takaino and the 1871 Nakano Uprising in Japan, (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1998); The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent: New Perspectives on the History of Japanese Turkish Relations (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 2003); Çağdaş Japonyaya Türkiyeden Bakışlar (Perspectives on Modern Japan from Turkey) (Istanbul: Simurg Press, 1999). Esenbel is member of many leading associations, including American Historical Association, Association for Asian Studies, and European Association for Japanese Studies. She is also awarded by various institutions, like Japan Foundation (Special Prize for Japanese Studies, 2007) and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, (Special Award for the promotion of Japanese-Turkish academic relations, 2007). Esenbel is currently working on the following topics: Japan and the World of Islam; Japanese Pan Asianism, Western Culture in Meiji Japan and Ottoman Turkey, Peasant Uprisings in Meiji Japan, and Japanese History in Turkish.

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• Souad Halila
  
  


Souad Halila has a PhD in History from the University of Southern California. She majored in American history & international relations, and minored in US literature. Her PhD thesis focused on the intellectual development and diplomatic career of African American Ralph J. Bunche. She taught English and Literature for eleven years at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. From 1999 to the present, she has been teaching US and GB history and culture at the University of Tunis and Sousse, Tunisia. She lectured extensively in the USA, Saudi Arabia, Spain, France, and Tunisia on contemporary issues related to the US, France, the Middle East, and North Africa. In September 2006, she spent 4 weeks at Wilson College, Pennsylvania as a senior Fulbright Visiting Specialist.

She has a broad interest in environmental issues and green philosophy but her research focuses primarily on US intellectual, political, social, cultural, and religious history, particularly social and political movements, race relations, African American history, Arab American history, and multiculturalism. She initiated several courses related to these topics at her university. Recently and since 9/11, she has focused her research on Islamic issues and the Occident.

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• Talat Halman
  
  

  Talat Halman served as the first Minister of Culture of the Turkish Republic. Currently he is Professor and Chairman, Department of Turkish Literature and Dean of Humanities and Letters, Bilkent University. Formerly he was on the faculties of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Princeton Universities for many years, and from 1986 to 1996, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at New York University. He served as Ambassador for Cultural Affairs and Turkey’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations. He has published more than sixty books (including 12 collections of his own poetry in Turkish and English) and 3000 articles in Turkish and English. From 1991 to 1995, he served as an elected member of the UNESCO Executive Board. Currently he is President of the UNICEF Turkish National Committee. He holds honorary doctorates from Boðaziçi and Ankara Universities.

  Honours and awards include Distinguished Service Awards of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and the Turkish Foreign Ministry, and “Knight Grand Cross, G.B.E., The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire”, (counterpart of “Sir”) conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth II.

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• Ilber Ortayli
  
  

  Ilber Ortayli had a double major in Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science and the Faculty of Letters, History and Geography, Department of History. He studied with Professor Halil Inalcık at the University of Chicago for a master’s degree. Ortayli received his doctorate in 1974 with a dissertation entitled “Local Administration in the Post-Tanzimat (Reform) Era.” In 1979 he was appointed as associate professor and in 1980 professors of political science. He was awarded associate professorship for his monograph German Influence in the Ottoman Empire. Ortayli served as visiting professor in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Princeton, Moscow, Rome, Munich, Strasbourg, Jannina, Sofia, Kiel, Cambridge, Oxford and Tunis. He published articles on the 16th and 19th century Ottoman Empire and Russia in academic journals both in Turkey and abroad. He was Chair of Department of the History of Public Administration from 1989 until 2002, at the Faculty of Political Science, Ankara University. From 2002 until 2004, he taught at Galatasaray University in Istanbul, and from 2004 to 2005 at Bilkent University, Department of International Relations in Ankara. Professor Ortayli is an executive committee member of the International Ottoman Studies Association and holds membership in the European Association of Iranian Studies. He is currently the president of the Topkapi Palace Museum.

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