Visiting Fellows - 2006

Name                          : Prof Dr Thomas William Simon

Institution                   : Illinois State University

Date of Visit(s)           : 15 August 2005 – 14 May 2006

E-mail                         : tsimon@hnc.nju.edu.ch

Brief Biodata

Prior to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Dr. Simon was associated with the Department of International Studies of the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Before that he taught philosophy and chaired the Department of Philosophy at Illinois State University. As a Fulbright Scholar, he taught in the University of Malaya Law Faculty and conducted research at the Centre for Civilization Dialogue. He has taught law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the University of Prishtina, Kosovo. He held the Distinguished Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Northern Colorado as well as helped to establish an English-speaking Japanese university, Miyazaki International College.

His awards include a Liberal Arts Fellowship from Harvard Law School. He has received awards for teaching excellence from the University of Florida and the University of Illinois.

He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Washington University and a J.D. in law from the University of Illinois.

His research focuses on global injustices and on minority issues. In addition to over forty articles, his publications include Group Injustices (2011), Laws of Genocide (2007), Law & Philosophy (2000), and Democracy and Social Injustice (1995). He founded and edited Injustice Studies, an electronic journal. He has consulted for the United Nations Working Group on Minorities and the American Bar Association Central/Eastern European Law Initiative. He served on a drafting committee for Albania’s new constitution. As a practicing attorney, he has represented a Diaspora Rwandan group in an extradition case to the Ad Hoc War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda and has served locally as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for child abuse cases. He has been admitted to the practice of law in the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Maryland.

Name                           : Assoc Prof Dr Alastair Stephen Gunn

Institution                   : Waikato University, New Zealand

Date of Visit(s)           : 4 September – 15 December 2006

                                       1 March – 1 June 2007

E-mail                         : alastair@waikato.ac.nz

Brief Biodata

Associate Professor Alastair S. Gunn (PhD Waikato) is a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ. He has been visiting scholar or professor at several universities in the US, Australia and Malaysia. His teaching and research interests are in applied ethics, including bioethics and engineering, environmental and media ethics. He has published three books on engineering ethics, all of which have been translated into Japanese and one into Chinese, and many monographs and articles. He has a particular interest in internet based teaching as well as philosophy in schools, and is involved in setting up a programme in Malaysia. He has been a member or convenor of several health and research ethics committees in NZ and regularly undertakes ethics consultancy work in New Zealand and internationally.

Name                           : Assoc Prof Dr Stefan Bucher

Institution                   : Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI), Malaysia

Date of Visit(s)           : 2 October – 31 December 2006

                                      10 April – 11 July 2007

                                       29 March 2012 – 30 September 2013

E-mail                         : st_bu@yahoo.com

Brief Biodata

Dr. Stefan Bucher received his PhD (magna cum laude) in philosophy in 1989 at the University of Münster (Germany). He has been an Asst./Assoc. Professor at Kyungbuk National University (Korea), the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tamkang University (Taiwan) and Sultan Idris Education University. He has served on committees and boards in universities, academic associations and an NGO. In Malaysia, he has been collaborating with SUHAKAM in organising Human Rights Days and researching Human Rights education. He has been lecturing and giving talks in numerous countries across Europe, Asia and America covering moral, social and intercultural issues and conducted research on peace, human rights and education while being affiliated with academic research centres in Europe and Asia. One of them is the UM Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, where he had two short-term attachments in 2006 and 2007 and where he serves currently as a Senior Research Fellow, since March 2012.

Name                           : Veronica Rovoletto

Institution                   : Bard College

Date of Visit(s)           : 1 October 2006 – 1 September 2007

E-mail                         : veronica.rovoletto@gmail.com

Brief Biodata

Veronica rovoletto was born in Venice, Italy, in 1973. She studied Philosophy at the University of Padua and pursued a PhD in philosophy at the University of Barcelona, Spain, where she became researcher in 2006. After studying with Francisco Lopez Frias and Norbert Bilbeny, Specializing in practical philosophy, she moved to New York, teaching at Bard college, where she published the Challenge of Globalization, BSS, Journal of Social Science, New York 2006. Influenced by the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and his concept of freedom, she analyzes the development and structure of the modern society focusing on its mass culture aspects. She asserts that, since the human beings cannot be detached from their circumstances, which form the world where they live, there must be constant attention to not be absorbed from those circumstances and, at the same time, there must be an attempt to absorb them. They cannot be avoided since they constitute our unique being, which must be preserved against the dryness of thinking created by a mass oriented culture.