May 21, 2026 from 06:00 PM to 08:30 PM (Europe/Brussels / UTC200)
Raadzaal, Institute of Philosophy, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2, Leuven (Belgium)
Keynote speaker: Elettra Stimilli (La Sapienza University, Rome)
Respondent: Tim Christiaens (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
Elettra Stimilli is professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome and is one of the leading voices in contemporary Italian thought. The area of her academic interests incorporates such diverse topics as critical theory, feminist theory, political theology, and German-Jewish thought. She is the author of numerous essays centered around the relationship between religion and politics with particular attention to the links between contemporary Italian thought and more recent French and German philosophical traditions. The lecture delivered in Leuven will focus on the feminist critiques of the political-theological framework, which is among the key directions of Elettra Stimilli’s recent research.
Elettra Stimilli has taught at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and has had several teaching and research assignments abroad (University of Oxford; École Normale Superiore in Lyon; École de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris; Cornell University; University of Chicago, Université Paris 8). Among her books, translated into several languages: Il debito del vivente. Ascesi e capitalismo (The Debt of Living. Ascesis and Capitalism, 2011, 2019); Debito e colpa (Debt and Guilt, 2015); Jacob Taubes. Sovranità e tempo messianico (Jacob Taubes. Sovereignty and Messianic Time, 2004, 2019). She has translated and edited most of Jacob Taubes’ works published in Italian. Among them: Il prezzo del messianesimo. Una revisione critica delle tesi di Gershom Scholem (The Price of Messianism. A Critical Revision of the Theses of Gershom Scholem, 2017), whose German edition she also edited (K&N, Würzburg 2006). In 2023, she published, at Neri Pozza, Filosofia dei mezzi. Per una nuova politica dei corpi (Philosophy of Means, Toward a New Politics of Bodies), which is going to be soon translated into English.
Tim Christiaens is assistant professor of economic ethics at Tilburg University. They are one of the co-authors of An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought: From Posthumanism to Cyberfascism published by Bloomsbury in 2026 and the author of Digital Working Lives (2022) on the gig economy and worker autonomy. They also published numerous essays on topics like Italian thought, philosophy of technology, neoliberalism, and biopolitical theory in journals such as European Journal of Social Theory, Italian Studies, Big Data & Society, and Foucault Studies.
The second part of the event is going to be dedicated to the discussion of Elettra Stimilli’s recently published paper “Political Theology Put to the Test of the Unexpected” published in Philosophy Today in 2024: https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase26openform&fp=philtoday&id=philtoday_2024_0068_0001_0041_0053&isauthorized=true.
This paper combines an exposition of the limitations of the limits of political theology with a search for possibilities of its overcoming, responding to numerous recent political events.
Organizers: Georgy Layus, Willem Styfhals
Centre of Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Culture
Further details available here.