Politics of Technologies in the Digital Age

Organizers

Image

Philosophy Research Laboratory on Sciences, Technology and Culture (EFEETP)

Department of Philosophy

University of Ioannina

Image

Centre for Digital Studies, Department of Sociology

National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens

Image

Department of History

Ionian University

Organizing Committee

Image

Golfo Maggini is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ioannina. She is also affiliated Professor (Professor “extra numerum”) at the Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw and adjunct faculty and teaching unit coordinator at the “Studies in European Civilization” programme of the Hellenic Open University. She has conducted doctoral research on Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology at the University de Paris XII-Val de Marne (1994-1997) and postdoctoral research at the Department of Philosophy, State University of New York Stony Brook (1997-1998) and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1998-1999) and taught history of philosophy, ethics and applied ethics at the American College of Greece and the University of Patras before her appointment at the University of Ioannina. She is the author of numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and volumes, in Greece and abroad, and has authored books, among which the 2010 Toward a Hermeneutics of the Technοlogical WorldFrom Heidegger to Contemporary Technoscience and the 2017 Kinēsis, Bios, Kairos, Technē, Polis: Phenomenological Approaches (Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jan Patočka, Michel Henry). Her current research interests include 20th century phenomenological philosophy, philosophy of technology, philosophy of the digital, philosophical theories of modernity and practical philosophy.

Manolis Patiniotis is professor of History of modern Science and Technology at the department of Sociology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He studied for many years the History of modern science in the European periphery and beyond. His research focused on environments that did not originally participate in the making of the Enlightenment and aimed at bridging the study of the emergence of European science with postcolonial studies. After spending a short time dealing with the so-called first crisis of modernity, he turned to the History and Philosophy of the Digital. From the perspective of History, he explores the shaping of digital ontologies through the intersection of Information Theory with the rise of discreet-state machines. From the perspective of philosophy, he inquires into the notions of modularity and virtuality, and the new affordances they provide for social control and individual self-determination. He was a founding member of the international research network STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) and a member of the Academic Committee that coordinated the creation of the Postgraduate Program Science Communication at the Hellenic Open University. His webpage can be found at digiscapes.org.

Image
Image

Fotini Vaki was born in Athens and studied Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Essex in U.K. She is Associate Professor of the History of Philosophy and Head of the Department of History at the Ionian University. She is the author of the books, Progress in the Enlightenment: Faces and Facets (Athens, Eurasia, 2012) and Neoliberalism, Democracy and Rights (Athens, Eurasia, 2021). She has published papers in the areas of Political and Moral philosophy and Critical Theory in Greek and International journals. Between 2015-2019 she served as an M.P for Corfu. 

Orestis Palermos is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ioannina. His research, at the intersection of philosophy of cognitive science, epistemology and philosophy of technology, focuses mainly on the epistemological, and lately also ethical, ramifications of the hypotheses of extended and distributed cognition. Orestis has co-edited several volumes, including Extended Epistemology (OUP), Socially Extended Epistemology (OUP), and Feminist Philosophy and Emerging Technologies (Routledge), and has previously held positions at the University of Cardiff (assistant and later associate professor) as well as the University of Edinburgh (postdoctoral research assistant), wherefrom he also received his PhD. 

Image
Image

Spyridon Kaltsas was born in Piraeus, Greece. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). He received his B.A. in Philosophy (Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology) and his M.A. in Political Science and Sociology (Department of Political Science and Public Administration) from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has published articles in Greek, in French, and in English and his main research interests are in the fields of moral philosophy, social theory, and the theory of communicative action. Spyridon is an Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at University of Ioannina since July 2022.

Giannis Perperidis is currently serving as an adjunct lecturer in the History Department of the Ionian University (Greece) and as a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University, Greece. He completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ioannina, receiving a scholarship from the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.). Giannis has authored articles in both national and international peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Public Realm, Technology in Society, Frontiers in Blockchain, and the International Journal of the Commons. Furthermore, he has contributed chapters to various collected volumes, such as those edited by Pandia & Kapos (2021) and Rantis (2022). In addition to his research contributions, Giannis translated one of Andrew Feenberg’s books, Between Reason and Experience into Greek (published by ROPI Publications). He has also been involved in the collective translation of Silke Helfrich and David Bollier’s book on the commons, entitled Free, Fair, and Alive. His expertise lies in the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Digital Technologies, Philosophy and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Commons and Digital Commons, alternative technologies and makerspaces, gaming technologies, and the broader political implications of technical artifacts.

Image
Image

Iakovos Georgoudis Pitarokilis was born in 1991 in Heraklion, Crete. He studied Philosophy and Bioethics and his scientific interest focuses on Epistemology, Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He is a PhD candidate in Department Philosophy at the University of Ioannina and is a scholar in the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser at the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas.

Nikos Nikoletos is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Philosophy Department of the University of Ioannina and a poet. His research focuses on the philosophy of anthropotechnology of Bernard Stiegler in relation to the digital milieu and the Anthropocene. He has published on the politics of technology, Marxist theory and provided literary criticisms in both international and Greek journals.

Image
Image

Paraskevi (Vivi) Zapsa studied History of European Culture and have a master’s degree in philosophy. Vivi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ioannina supervised by Professor Golfo Maggini. The topic of her thesis is “High Tech as a Key Shaping Parameter of the Late Modern Condition: A Consideration in the Light of Contemporary Phenomenology of Technique”. Vivi is Head of Human Resources and Finance at NIKI Digital Engineering and a consultant for the German high-tech company TWT GmbH Science & Innovation. Paraskevi's main concern is the creation and training of scientific teams for the staffing of industrial research groups and the development of integrated solutions for the largest companies in the German automotive industry in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Engineering, Cloud-based technologies, Autonomous Driving, Data Science, Virtual Reality, E-Mobility, Systems Engineering, Aerospace, and Quantum Computing Technology.