Toward New Democratic Imaginaries - Istanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics

Seyla Benhabib, born in Istanbul, Turkey, is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University and was Director of its Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics from 2002 to 2008. She was the President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2006-07 and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1995.  She has previously taught at the New School for Social Research and Harvard Universities, where she was Professor of Government from 1993-2000 and Chair of Harvard's Program on Social Studies from 1996-2000.Professor Benhabib is the recipient of the Ernst Bloch prize for 2009, the Leopold Lucas Prize from the Theological Faculty of the University of Tubingen (2012), and the Meister Eckhart Prize (2014; one of Germany's most prestigious philosophical prizes). A Guggenheim Fellowship recipient (2011-12), she has been research affiliate and senior scholar in many institutions in the US and in Europe such as Berlin's Wissenschaftkolleg (2009), NYU's Strauss Center for the Study of Law and Justice (2012) and the European University Institute in Florence (Summer 2015).Her work has been translated into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Turkish, Swedish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew, Polish, Japanese and Chinese and she has also edited and coedited 10 volumes on topics ranging from democracy and difference to the rights of migrant women and children; the communicative ethics controversy and Hannah Arendt. Her volume, Migrations and Mobilities: Gender, Borders and Citizenship (NYU Press, 2009), edited with Judith Resnik from the Yale Law School, has been named by Choice one of the outstanding academic books of the year.Her most recent books include: The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, (2002); The Rights of Others. Aliens, Citizens and Residents (2004), winner of the Ralph Bunche award of the American Political Science Association (2005) and the North American Society for Social Philosophy award (2004); Another Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations, with responses by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig and Will Kymlicka (Oxford University Press, 2006); and Dignity in Adversity. Human Rights in Troubled Times