Professor Ben Trott is a Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Philosophie und Kunstwissenschaft (IPK), Speaker of the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), and Co-Speaker of the university-wide Gender and Diversity Research Network. His research combines three areas of inquiry. First, queer theory and gender studies. This includes attention to the relationship between sexuality, gender, labour and global political economy. Second, political theory and philosophy and the resources these provide in thinking about political claim-making, demands, conflict and transformation. Third, social movements and contentious politics in an age of globalisation. He is currently working on a book about the ongoing effects of the 2007/8 political economic crisis, the politicisation of “identity”, and contemporary conflicts around free speech. He was previously Lecturer in Feminist Thought and Global Justice in the Politics Department at Cardiff University and a Postdoctoral Associate with the Program in Literature at Duke University. He completed his doctorate in Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Dr. Chiara Stefanoni is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Sciences of Art (IPK). Her research is located in the field of critical animal studies, with particular consideration to socio-political aspects of human-animal relations and their environments, as well as to the philosophical dimension of the topic. Her work focuses on animal oppression with a structural critique of different kinds of society, from archaic to capitalist ones, combined with an intersectional perspective, which considers the various axes of power linking humans and animals, focusing especially on gender and class. Thus, she also works at the nexus between Marxism, feminism, and queer studies. In 2021 she obtained her doctorate in Transcultural Studies in Humanities at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo where she is also appointed "cultrice della material" in Moral Philosophy.