I am a philosopher, located at the University of St. Gallen. Prior to coming to Switzerland, I had studied Law, Music Performance, Political Theory and Philosophy in Greece and in Germany. Moving between these different fields as well as beyond academic and artistic practices, institutions, contexts, and borders, has shaped my thinking in lasting ways.
My research is grounded in continental philosophy and the tradition of critical theory. Systematically, I draw insights from social and political philosophy, practical philosophy, political theory, and aesthetics. Historically, I engage with theoretical resources ranging from Early Modern thought, the Scottish Enlightenment, and German Idealism to the Frankfurt School, post-war French philosophy, intersectionality, queer theory, and decolonial approaches. These traditions do not form a lineage so much as a constellation: shifting, tense, and unfinished.
In times marked by fragmentation, exclusion, and increasingly exhausted visions of the future, what drives my work is the fragile promise of togetherness that is neither given nor guaranteed, but always at stake. Philosophy matters where it helps us name this stake and where it teaches us how to listen more carefully to plurality and the difference living within it. In this light, Hannah Arendt’s notion of "acting in concert" is more than just a theoretical reference; it is a biographical echo and at the same time an imperative guiding my work.
Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), University of St. Gallen
Opera is undoubtedly a difficult art genre. After its highlight in the 19th century when opera shined as one of the most popular and at the same time provocative and critical forms of art, opera has been and keeps being accused of being outdated, elitist therefore exclusive, unpopular and therefore uncompetitive and money‑consuming. Notwithstanding, a series of current composers took up and rose to the challenge to provide us with operas that succeeded in rehabilitating the opera as a genre of art even in the eyes of its fiercest critics. One of those composers is the Belgian avant‑garde jazz pianist and composer Kris Defoort (born in 1959) with his opera The Time of Our Singing that premiered in the La Monnaie Theatre in Brussels in September 2021. Based on the name of the same name by the American writer Richard Powers, the opera tells the story of a family involved in music and dealing heavily with issues of musical talent and genius, dysfunctional family structures, prejudices, historical traumas, racism, and political activism.
With this opera as centrepiece, an opera that will be staged also in St. Gallen in March and April 2023 under the musical direction of Kwame Ryan and the stage direction of Ted Huffman, we intend to step up the question regarding the actuality of the opera as an art form. The question upon which we will be focusing is “What Can Business School Students Learn from The Opera?” and the answers we expect from that question revolve around two very timely and important topics, namely diversity and in/justice.
More concretely, the first aspect we intend to discuss is how the opera as an art form thematizes diversity and is able (or not) to take account of the Different and/or the Other. In this light, we categorize, systematize, and provide a panoramic overview of the various and different forms that the Other is encountered within the canon of classic operatic compositions. The second task of our course lays in discussing notions of justice and ‑ maybe, even more importantly ‑ injustice that are abundant in the operatic world. Finally, we turn to the logistical costs that come alongside the attempt to overcome the aforementioned forms of injustice.
Overcoming racial or sexual discrimination, for example, does not just demand a higher than usual sensitivity and awareness from the opera directors. It is also connected with costly interventions that are very often met with distrust and cautiousness from the more traditional press and the rather conventional opera‑goers. Seen this way, a part of the course will be devoted to discussing theories and models of production management that are capable of providing the suitable framework in regard to this objective.
Needless to say, that in order to achieve this undoubtedly very ambitious goal reading texts does not suffice. Going to the opera, getting engaged in productions that are currently under development and talking with world‑renowned art producers is also a part of our course. Thanks to the generosity of the Opera House of St. Gallen the students of the course will have the unique chance to attend and get involved in the production not only of the opera The Time of Our Singing but also of the staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, talk to the producers and become actively involved in an egalitarian music and artistic production.