Craig Calhoun is President of the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, which works globally to advance cross-cultural understanding, improve governance, and deepen knowledge of great transformations shaping the human future. Calhoun was previously Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science,where he remains Centennial Professor and before that President of the New York-based Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and University Professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU. His books have been translated into 18 languages and include Does Capitalism Have a Future? (2013), The Roots of Radicalism (2012), and Nations Matter (2007), which predicted rising nationalist and populist challenges to cosmopolitanism grounded in a highly unequal global economy.

Peter Beilharz is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, Professor of Culture and Society of Curtin University and Visiting Professor at Bauman Institute, University of Leeds. Most of his research is also in these areas including work on socialism and modernity, the idea of antipodean modernity, and ongoing work on Zygmunt Bauman. Peter is a founding editor of the journal Thesis Eleven: critical theory and historical sociology (1980 – ) and was the inaugural Director of Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe (2003-2014).

Professor Calhoun’s visit to La Trobe is part of the 50th anniversary celebrations and is jointly sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor, The College for the Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, and the Thesis Eleven Centre.