Keynote Speakers

Claus Offe teaches "Theories of the State" in a joint professorship that he shares with Professor Ulrich K. Preuß. Offe completed his PhD at the University of Frankfurt and his postdoctoral lecture qualification at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975-1989) and Bremen (1989-1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995-2005). He has worked as researcher and visiting professor at (among others) the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and the New School University, New York.

Jeffrey Olick is Professor of Sociology and History at the University of Virginia.   While he has published on a wide variety of topics, his interests focus particularly on collective memory, critical theory, transitional justice, and postwar Germany.  Olick has published three books: The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility, Routledge, 2007 In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat,1943-1949, University of Chicago Press, 2005 States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection,Edited Volume, Duke University Press, 2003

Kathleen Thelen is the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. She is also a Permanent External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany and Appointed Affiliated Visiting Professor at the International Center for Business and Politics at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Thelen studies the origins, development, and effects of institutional arrangements that define distinctive Òvarieties of capitalismÓ across the developed democracies. Her most recent single-authored book, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (Cambridge University Press 2004), was selected as winner of the 2006 Mattei Dogan Award of the Society for Comparative Research (based at Yale University), for the Òbest book published in 2004-05Ó, and as co-winner of the 2005 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the American Political Science Association for Òthe best book on government, politics, or international affairsÓ published in 2004.

Tony Taylor is a leading national and international figure in the field of history education. In 1999 he was Director of the Australian Government's National Inquiry into the Teaching and Learning of History and, since 2001, he has been Director of the Australian Government's National Centre for History Education. He is currently principal Chief Investigator in two large Australian Research Council projects, has been a Chief Investigator in seven Australian Research Council Small Grants as well as several other small grants. He has published extensively in Australia and overseas in the field of history education.