Press release: Erich Kofmel promoted to research professorship

Press release: Erich Kofmel promoted to research professorship
26 February 2010

In accordance with Swiss legislation and the laws of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, Erich Kofmel has been promoted to the position of Research Professor of Political Theory at the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), with effect from 1 March 2010. Professor Kofmel will remain Managing Director of SCIS, the research centre's Board of Directors announced today.

Founded in 2006 at the University of Sussex, England, SCIS has been an international association under Swiss law, based in Geneva, since 2009.

SCIS is not an accredited higher education institution in Switzerland and does not regularly undertake teaching and the professorship awarded to Erich Kofmel, while a signifier of academic excellence, is a research professorship not a university professorship. As an inter- and transdisciplinary research centre, SCIS is formally independent of university structures.

Professor Kofmel (35) is the world's leading expert on anti-democratic thought and practice. He studied for a doctoral degree in social and political thought at the University of Sussex and Sciences Po Paris and holds Master's degrees in Public and Development Management and Roman Catholic Theology as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Comparative and Cross-Cultural Research Methods. Prior to taking up an academic career, he worked in project and general management in the private, public, and non-governmental sectors in Europe and Africa. A native of Switzerland, he lived for prolonged periods in Senegal, South Africa, England, and France.

Professor Kofmel is the editor of two contributed volumes, Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology and Anti-Democratic Thought (Imprint Academic, 2008), and the author of two academic blogs, the Anti-Democracy Agenda (www.anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com) and the Political Theology Agenda (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com). An edited volume on alternatives to democracy in development policy and a monograph, Me Against Mediocrity, are in preparation.

He is available for consultancy mandates particularly in the fields of anti-democratic thought and practice, political theologies, and the interaction of the individual and society.

SCIS continues to invite applications from suitably qualified candidates worldwide to join the centre as Research Associates or Senior Research Associates or to do internships. We are eager to work with people (in person or through electronic communication channels) who will produce original research at the cutting edge of the study of "the individual and society" in any discipline or area of study.

Website: www.sussexcentre.org

Contact: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org

Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland