UHK database of interviews

• Cinzia Bearzot
• Filip Karfík
• Marian Andrzej Wesoły

Cinzia Bearzot is Professor of Greek History at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. Her research focuses on ancient Greek political and institutional history, as well as on Greek historiography, with particular attention to democratic institutions, political and juridical thought, and the interpretation of historical sources. She has published extensively on classical Greece, contributing to both specialist debates and university teaching. Among her main publications are Come si abbatte una democrazia. Tecniche di colpo di stato nell’Atene antica (Roma–Bari, 2013), Manuale di storia greca (Bologna, 2005), La giustizia nella Grecia antica (Roma, 2008), Alcibiade.

Il leone della democrazia ateniese (Rome, 2021), Studi su Isocrate (1980–2000) (Milano, 2020), Storiografia greca. Un’introduzione (Bologna, 2022), and La Grecia del V secolo. Dal bipolarismo di Atene e Sparta al conflitto globale (Roma, 2024).
Alongside her research activity, she is actively involved in teaching and participates in the international scholarly community through conferences, research projects, and academic collaborations. Her work contributes to a deeper understanding of Greek historical thinking and its significance for the study of the ancient world.

Professor Filip Karfík (1963) is currently professor emeritus at the University of Fribourg and a former long-time professor at Charles University in Prague. During the communist era in Czechoslovakia, he initially studied ancient languages and philosophy privately under the tutelage of Jan Patočka’s students. From 1985 to 1991, he studied classical philology at Charles University, and he has devoted his entire life to ancient philosophy and modern philosophical traditions (phenomenology and hermeneutics). He is a world-renowned and respected expert on the works of Plato and Plotinus.

Let us mention, for example, his book Die Beseelung des Kosmos. Untersuchungen zur Kosmologie, Seelenlehre und Theologie in Platons Phaidon und Timaios (Munich-Leipzig 2004), or the edited volumes Plato Revived: Essays on Ancient Platonism in Honour of Dominic J. O’Meara (Berlin-Boston 2013) and Plato’s Timaeus: Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium Platonicum Pragense (Leiden 2020). Professor Karfík is also active as a translator. In the Czech Republic, he is further known as a socially engaged citizen and occasional political blogger.

Marian Wesoły is currently a professor emeritus of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and lectures at the Jacob of Paradies Academia in Gorzów Wielkopolski. His entire academic career in Poland was connected to Poznań and Adam Mickiewicz University. His doctoral (1977) and postdoctoral (1992) dissertations were devoted to the history of Greek philosophy. In 2008 he received the title of a full professor. He was granted several foreign scholarships, e.g. in Italy (1980: University of Padova, 1983: Italian Institute for History in Naples, 1997: Villa I Tatti), Germany (1986/87: University of Tübingen), and Greece (1993,2000, 2012: Academy of Athens). Prof. Wesoły is a co-founder of the „Peitho. Examina Antiqua” journal.

For twenty years he has regularly participated in the Eleatica-Symposia, initiated by Prof. Livio Rossetti at the Alario Foundation in Ascea, close to the ruins of ancient Elea/Velia. Finally, we should mention that on the 100th anniversary of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2019) he was awarded Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Prof. Wesoły is a specialist in Greco-Roman and Byzantine philosophies. In his numerous works he attempts to combine philological analyses with philosophical interpretation. Moreover, he is active as a translator and one of his most recent productions is a bilingual (Greek/Polish) edition and commentary of Aristotle’s /Analytica Priora et Posteriora/ (2020).