Background

Thomas Berns is a lecturer in political philosophy and ethics at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), a researcher at the Perelman Centre of the Philosophy of Law at the same institution and a lecturer at the University of Liège (philosophy department).

A ULB philosophy graduate and a doctor in philosophy and arts, a master of studies on the Renaissance at the University of Ferrera, his doctoral thesis on political philosophy in the Renaissance (written in Rome) won the Halkin-Williot Foundation prize.

To date his work has focused on the philosophy of politics, law and norms in a wide sense. Today, in addition to political thought in the Renaissance and at the threshold of modernity, he is examining the general question of war, the notion of trust, on the new forms of normalising and statistical monitoring, or on government by report.

In addition he is the secretary general of Interuniversity Renaissance and Humanism Institute (Brussels), a member of the editorial committees for the journals Multitudes (Paris) and Dissensus (Liège), as well as ‘The Transmission of Memory Council’ (French Speaking Community of Belgium).