The virtual platform HPS.CESEE and Thesis Eleven warmly invite you to a public global book talk on the biography of Zygmunt Bauman. Natalia Aleksiun (Jena/New York) and Peter Beilharz (Melbourne) will join Izabela Wagner (Warsaw) to discuss her newly published biography of Zygmunt Bauman: Bauman. A Biography (Cambridge: Polity Press 2020).

Global thinker, public intellectual and world-famous theorist of ‘liquid modernity’, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became a prolific and popular writer and an intellectual talisman for young people everywhere. He was one of those rare scholars who, grey-haired and in his eighties, had his finger on the pulse of the youth. Wagner’s biography brings out the complex connections between Bauman’s life experiences and his work, showing how his trajectory as an ‘outsider’ forced into exile by the anti-Semitic purges in Poland has shaped his thinking over time. Her careful and thorough account will be the standard biography of Bauman’s life and work for years to come.

This event will take place in two sittings to accommodate a global audience across multiple time zones. October 20 will feature all three discussants and audience questions. October 22 will replay this discussion and include a public Q and A with Izabela Wagner. These events are open to the public.

Tuesday 20 October Register here

18:00-20:00 AEDT (9:00-11:00 CEST / 10:00-12:00 MSK)

Thursday 22 October Register here

18:00-20:00 CEST (19:00-21:00 MSK / 12:00-14:00 EDT)

A Zoom link to the event will be provided after registration

Contact hps.cesee@gmail.com for more information.

The event is hosted by the platform: History of Science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and Thesis Eleven.

This event is part of a series of open zoom events aiming to foster the discussion of new books and approaches within the history of science and scholarship (broadly understood) in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.