Founding Members

Willem Schinkel

Willem Schinkel is Professor of Social Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Public Administration and Sociology. He has been visiting professor at NYU and Humboldt University Berlin, and he is currently a member of The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research is geared towards a theoretically informed critical analyses of public issues ranging from migration and climate change to contemporary capitalism, democracy and smart cities. His research draws from a variety of disciplines, including sociology, philosophy, anthropology, STS, cultural studies and media studies. It has been funded by NWO (by a Veni grant) and the ERC (by an ERC Starting Researcher Grant). Amongst others, he is the author of Denken in een tijd van sociale hypochondrie (Klement, 2007), De gedroomde samenleving (Klement, 2008), Aspects of Violence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); editor of Globalisation & the State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); co-editor, with Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens, of In Medias Res. Peter Sloterdijk's Pherological Poetics of Being (Amsterdam University Press, 2011); and author of De nieuwe democratie (Bezige Bij, 2012), Over nut en nadeel van de sociologie voor het leven (Boom Filosofie, 2014), and Imagining European Societies. A Critique of Immigrant Integration (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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Sjoerd van Tuinen

Sjoerd van Tuinen is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam and holds a PhD from Ghent University. As Coordinator of the Centre for Art and Philosophy (www.caponline.org), he does transdisciplinary research in the humanities (philosophy, aesthetics, art history, critical theory) and regularly collaborates with art institutions and art schools. Sjoerd is editor of many books, including Deleuze Compendium (Amsterdam:  Boom, 2009), Deleuze and The Fold. A Critical Reader (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), De nieuwe Franse filosofie (Amsterdam: Boom, 2011), Giving and Taking. Antidotes to a Culture of Greed (Rotterdam: NAi/V2, 2014), Speculative Art Histories (forthcoming 2016), The Polemics of Ressentiment (New York/London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2017), and has authored Sloterdijk. Binnenstebuiten denken (Kampen: Klement, 2004). Van Tuinen is finalizing a book on Mannerism entitled Matter, Manner, Idea: Deleuze and Mannerism.

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Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens

Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens (1973) is an Economist and Philosopher. She is Associate Professor and programme coordinator of Humanities and Economics & Business at the Erasmus University College (EUC). As researcher she is connected with the Erasmus School of Economics and the Erasmus Institute for Public Knowledge. Values form a key aspect of her research and she argues education is a pivotal route to allow exploration of such values and give shape to them. Within the Erasmus University College she develops several educational programs, both in terms of the arts and culture sector as well as the business sector. A crucial motivation for this is the desire that students not only study in Rotterdam, but also become a ‘Rotterdammer’ during their time here. Further, Liesbeth is an Academic Board Member of RASL (Rotterdam Arts & Sciences Lab) and a member of the Council for Health and Society.

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Bregje van Eekelen

Prof. Dr. Bregje van Eekelen is Full Professor of Design, Culture and Society. Van Eekelen received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to her appointment in Delft, Van Eekelen was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science in Princeton in 2017-2018 and a senior researcher History of Social and Human Sciences at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University. 

As an anthropologist/historian of knowledge Van Eekelen draws on insights from the social sciences (anthropology) and the humanities (history, cultural analysis). Her chair focuses on the reciprocal relations between the world of design (its artifacts, practices and concepts) and the social, cultural, economic and political worlds in which design emerges. These relations are studied dynamically: the chair functions as an interface between the past, present and the future.

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