Philosophy and Letters
Quentin Skinner
Skinner reflects on his intellectual path over the past twenty years, from theorizing a third concept of freedom, to reconstructing the concept of State and defending it in our normative discourse against oversimplifying theorizers of the «death of the State», to the crisis of contemporary democracies.
History
Peter Brown
Susannah Gold interviews Peter Brown and his Balzan research project leader, David Michelson, about the process of “reconceiving the historical reference work” with the online historical reference for Syriac studies, syriaca.org, the cornerstone of Figures in a Landscape.
Mathematics, physics, and technology
Khalid Barkaoui
Science journalist Senne Starckx interviews astrophysicist Khalid Barkaoui from the SPECULOOS project, led by Michaël Gillon (2017 Balzan Prizewinner for The Sun’s Planetary System and Exoplanets). The project, involving six universities, uses robotic telescopes in Chile, Tenerife and Mexico to find Earth-like planets around red dwarf stars using the transit method.
Mathematics, physics, and technology
In this interview with journalist Evgeny Utkin, Luigi Ambrosio, winner of the 2019 Balzan Prize, talks about his life as a mathematician, touching on his areas of research, his career in education, and the responsibilities of scientists today.
Natural sciences
David Tilman
In this interview with zoologist Charles Godfray, David Tilman, 2014 Balzan Prize for Plant Ecology, talks about how biodiversity relates to different ecological and ecosystem functions, with reference to his field studies at Cedar Creek, Minnesota.
History
Islamicist Massimo Campanini interviews Michael Cook, 2019 Balzan Prize for Islamic Studies, touching on focal points in his research, method and the historian’s profession, the role of history in education, and the current situation of Islamic Studies.