Global Transformations: ASU-BİLGİ Talk Series - Thoughts on Resilience of Societies: Social and Political Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date: March 4, 2021

Time: 19.30 (IST) – 09.30 (AZ

The ASU-BİLGİ Talk Series will be hosting world-renowned intellectuals and researchers contributing to our understanding of the complex range of forces which are reshaping our world. Those series will be global in nature crossing the boundaries between cultures and disciplines.

Speakers:

In conversation with: Professor Craig Calhoun, School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University

Professor Asaf Savaş Akat, Faculty of Business, Department of Economics, Istanbul Bilgi University

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Craig Calhoun is University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University. Previously, he was Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and a professor at NYU, Columbia, and UNC-Chapel Hill. His work at Arizona State University focuses on strengthening the ability of the social sciences, working together with the natural sciences and humanities, to address the most complex challenges facing society today — challenges ranging from the shifting nature of globalization, to the future of place-based communities and of democracy, the complicated social and ethical issues raised by new technologies, and the need for creativity, solidarity, and determination in order to achieve sustainable futures. He has published ten books and some 150 articles and chapters on social theory and comparative and historical research on social movements, forms of social solidarity, knowledge institutions, and political economy. Among the best known are Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China and Nations Matter: Citizenship, Solidarity, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. His work has been translated into 21 languages. Calhoun’s newest book, Degenerations of Democracy (with Charles Taylor and Dilip Gaonkar) will be published by Harvard University Press in 2021. 

Asaf Savas Akat is University Professor of Economics and first Rector of Istanbul Bilgi University. He began his career in 1966, at Istanbul’s Faculty of Economics, following his education at Istanbul University (BSc; PHD) and The University of East Anglia (MA, Economics). Asaf Savas Akat has also acquired many important roles in professional life. Following the military coup in 1980, Akat quit academic life in 1982 and joined the private sector, working in different management positions. He became a member of the board of one of Turkey’s largest companies, Eczacibaci Holding, which is active in several sectors. (He still holds this post.) In 1989, Akat returned to academia and started to lecture at the Marmara University in Istanbul. He also became politically active: in 1993 he co-founded the New Democracy Movement (YDH), a reformist-liberal political party. He is the author of many publications and three books on economic issues. His latest, “Iktisadi Analiz” (Economic Analysis), was published in 2009. In his paper “The Political Economy of Turkish Inflation” (2005) he researched inflation in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s.