The Delphi Academy of European Studies, sponsored by the Region of Central Greece, focuses on the diachronic and synchronic study of European history and culture and the ways in which Europe today responds to the multifaceted challenges of political, economic, and cultural globalization.
The curriculum and academic function of the Delphi Academy of European Studies is overseen by an International Committee consisting of the following Professors:
Homi Bhabha, (Harvard; former Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center)
Peter Frankopan, (Oxford; Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research)
Michèle Lamont, (Harvard; former Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs)
Spiros Pollalis, (Harvard School of Design)
Panagiotis Roilos, (Harvard; founder of the Academy and chair of the Committee, President of the European Cultural Delphi Centre)
Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, (Johns Hopkins University)
The Academy offers two-week interdisciplinary, tuition-free seminars at the Centre’s facilities in Delphi. The seminars, which are taught in English by world renowned scholars, are open mainly to graduate students/PhD candidates but also to qualified undergraduates. The instructors adopt interdisciplinary approaches to their subjects, with a view to addressing the research interests of students in the Humanities as well as the Social Sciences. The seminars are accompanied by a workshop and/or invited lectures on current political and cultural developments in Europe.
The overarching topic of the Academy’s seminar program 2026 is Technology, Society, and Politics.
The seminars will be offered from July 19 to 31, 2026.
SEMINAR PROGRAM
On The Uses of Democracy: A Biopolitical Inquiry
by Timothy Campbell| Professor of Italian, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University
https://romancestudies.cornell.edu/timothy-c-campbell
(10 days)
Description
From its origins in the work of Michel Foucault to its later elaboration in the thought of Giorgio Agamben, biopolitics has come to name a kind of deformation of politics, the space where a power of and over life collapses distinctions among forms of government. In such a scenario of political realism, the rise of biopolitics signals the end of the political, understood as the life of the polis and the possibility of deliberating collectively about the city, its present and future. The following course offers students an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of both the political and biopolitical today, specifically with regard to a particular form of government that is under pressure everywhere, namely democracy. After reading the founding texts of biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Esposito, Mbembe), we will turn to the question of what uses democracy might serve. Here the concepts of Berlant’s “infrastructure” and Negri’s “constituent power” are featured in the construction of what we will call “democratic objects.”
Automation and the History of Knowledge
by Alex Csiszar, Professor of the History of Science, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/alex-csiszar
(5 days)
Description
The rise of generative artificial intelligence has led to grand predictions of a revolution in scientific method and of knowledge production more generally. But it has also prompted dire warnings about the erosion of human judgment, epistemic distortion, and of the end of university training as we know it. In this course we will build a framework for evaluating such claims by examining the long history of attempts to invent algorithms and technologies for producing, justifying, and judging knowledge claims. What is the history of the relationship between craft and code? What becomes of expertise when algorithms are used to exercise judgment? How have conceptions of human intelligence and reason themselves been transformed through attempts to produce machines that mimic them? What happens to citizenship as identity becomes increasingly defined through data and metrics? Topics will include the history and philosophy of quantification, data, algorithms, and technologies of governance.
Instruments and Instrumentalities
by Emily I. Dolan, Professor and Chair of Music Department, Brown University
https://vivo.brown.edu/display/edolan1
(5 days)
Description
Today, in a variety of fields, the definitions of instrument and instrumentality are transforming. While retaining their older connotations of means to ends and tool-use, the terms instrument—and instrumental—now also imply bigger, messier complexes of technologies, bodies, and rationalities. Over the course of this week, we will think transversally, across categories and contexts, to consider the forms and meanings of instruments and ideas of instrumentality. Themes include control, innovation, mediation, and labor and our readings are drawn from a diverse set of disciplines that deal with instruments, including History of Science, Media Studies, English, Science and Technology Studies, and Music Studies. A strong musical focus in our readings reflects the ways in which music and music making have long served as ways of testing the “instrumentalizability” of new technologies and as conceptual model for technological organization.
*******
Upon completion of the seminar program, certificates will be awarded to the students.
Students will be offered free lodging and meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) by the Academy at the European Cultural Delphi Centre. The seminar program is tuition-free.
Applicants to the Academy should submit the following documents:
1) CV (no more than 3 pages)
2) Research statement no longer than 200 words
3) Two letters of recommendation (one from the applicant’s PhD/academic advisor, in the case of graduate students). The letters should include information about the applicant’s coursework and academic performance in areas related to the topics of the seminars.
4) Proof of English language competence
Applications should be submitted to the European Cultural Delphi Centre (Mrs. Athena Gotsi, conferences2@eccd.gr) by March 14, 2026.
Decisions will be communicated to the applicants by March 30, 2026.
Successful applicants who will accept the Delphi Academy’s offer are expected to contribute the non-refundable registration fee of 250 euros to the European Cultural Delphi Centre as a token of their commitment to participate in the seminar program.
