2018 Seminar in Sairme, Georgia

July 16-21, 2018

Following a now long tradition, IES-Europe will be back to Georgia this summer for a seminar organized in cooperation with the New Economic School of Georgia and the South Caucasus branch of The Friedrich Neumann Foundation für die Freiheit.

Georgia is the ideal meeting point for students from the East and the West. This is due to the pro-liberty reforms (e.g. very light visa requirements) enacted after the Rose revolution and, in particular, by Kakha Bendukitze, a Georgian statesman, businessman and philanthropist, also founder of the Knowledge Foundation

This year’s seminar will be held at the Sairme Hotel in Sairme (four hours away from Tbilisi and one hour away from the airport in Kutaisi). 

Note that for the selected students, accommodations and attendance to the conferences are free. Selected students will only need to fund their transportation.

Faculty will include: Douglas Rasmussen (philosophy), Pierre Garello (economics of law), Carlo Lottieri (political science and philosophy), Christian Nasulea (economics), Paata Sheshelidze (economics) and Gia Jianderi (economics).

Application Deadline: June 1st, 2018

Speakers

Douglas B. Rasmussen
St. John’s University
Douglas B. Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in NYC. Among the books he has co-authored (with Douglas J. Den Uyl) are: Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (1991); Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (2006); and The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (2016). He has authored numerous articles in many scholarly anthologies and in such journals as: the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly; American Philosophical Quarterly; International Philosophical Quarterly; The New Scholasticism; The Personalist; Public Affairs Quarterly; Social Philosophy & Policy; The Review of Metaphysics; and The Thomist. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Ayn Rand Society and as a member of Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is co-editor (with Den Uyl) of The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984). His areas of research interest are epistemology, ontology, ethics, and political philosophy as well as the moral foundations of capitalism.

Pierre Garello
IES-Europe – Aix-Marseille Université
President of IES-Europe and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines, Pierre Garello is Professor of Economics at the Faculté d’Economie et Gestion of Aix Marseille University in France. He has published various articles on Austrian economics, law and economics (especially competition law and contract law). He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines, a scholarly review dealing with economic, legal, philosophical and political issues, in the tradition of the French Classical Liberal School. He is also at the center of a liberal network in Europe and is the coordinator of the European liberal think tanks Resource Bank. He is directing research for IREF, a think tank that promotes tax competition and sound public finances.

Carlo Lottieri
University of Siena
Carlo Lottieri is currently Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Siena and Professor of Philosophy of Social Sciences at Facoltà di Teologia in Lugano (Switzerland). Fellow of many institutions, he is the Director of Political Theory department of the Istituto Bruno Leoni. His writings develop a radical libertarianism combining a strong emphasis on the inviolability of other people and a realistic approach to the modern State. His interests cover Federalism, Libertarianism, Political Theology, Military Ethics, Elitism, Evolutionary Theory of Law, Commons and Private Property. He edited many works by Bruno Leoni in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Georgian. His last book (Un’idea elvetica di libertà, 2017) emphasizes the contrast between Swiss federation and European Union, rejecting any project of super-State and supporting a better appreciation of localism and self-government.

Christian Nasulea
University of Bucharest
Christian Nasulea teaches economics at the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest where he is a member of the Department of International Relations and Universal History. His courses cover topics such as Global Economics, Globalisation and History of Economic Thought. He is a fellow of the Institut de Recherches Economiques et Fiscales. In addition to his university work he also develops learning resources for high school students who are interested in economics. His areas of research interest include public policy and stimuli for economic development, political and commercial negotiation in international relations, behavioural economics and decision processes.

Paata Sheshelidze
New Economic School – Georgia
Paata Sheshelidze is co-founder and president of the New Economic School – Georgia, a Tbilisi based free market think-tank and educational center. He is editor in chief of Library of Liberty publications and co-founder and director of the Institute of Economic Freedom and Library of Liberty. He teaches various economic disciplines at University of Georgia and Black Sea International University in Tbilisi. Mr. Sheshelidze is one of the most demanded and quoted economic expert in Georgian media with almost daily appearance.

Gia Jandieri
New Economic School – Georgia

Gia Jandieri is vice-president and founder of the New Economic School – Georgia (NESG). In the past he has served as member of the board of the Georgian National Institute of Statistics, has worked for the Open Society Foundation, the Office of Anticorruption Working Group. He has served as Head of the Financial Office of the Parliament of Georgia, Member and Financial Officer at Central Election Commission of Georgia, Adviser at the National Audit Office of Georgia, and as Economist at the Ministry of Wholesale of Georgia.