The Institute for Human Sciences is pleased to announce that Ludger Hagedorn will be the new Head of IWM’s Patočka Archive and the related research focus. He has taken over from Klaus Nellen, who was in charge of the archive since the Institute’s inception in 1982. This change comes with a thematic shift. While research on and publication of Patočka’s work will remain a key element, the new program will also focus on the philosophical idea of Europe and its meaning in today’s globalized (post-European) world.

Hagedorn has contributed significantly to the development of IWM’s Patočka- Archive into a place for research and exchange with international renown. Since the 1990s, he has been involved in several IWM projects related to Patočka’s thought, acting as Research Associate and later Research Director. He took his doctorate from the Technical University Berlin in 2002. From 2005 to 2009, he was a Purkyne Fellow at the Czech Academy of Sciences and in 2010 a Guest Professor at Södertörns Högskola, Stockholm. His research interests include phenomenology, political philosophy, modernity and secularization. He has taught at the Gutenberg-University of Mainz, the Charles University of Prague and more recently at NYU Berlin.