Last year our Foundation launched the Phyllis Beddington Wiener Chair at the Université libre de Bruxelles, a new teaching and research chair welcoming, for one or two months, academics from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford working in all fields.
For the first edition of the chair (2025-2026), two academics were selected: Jason D. Lotay, Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and Harald Wydra, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Lotay works on differential geometry and geometric analysis. He is particularly interested in geometry related to special holonomy and calibrated submanifolds, geometric flows including Lagrangian mean curvature flow and the G2-Laplacian flow, as well as gauge theory, typically in higher dimensions, and geometric problems arising from theoretical physics, such as M-Theory and heterotic String Theory.
He will be welcomed at the ULB by Professor Joel Fine (Faculty of Sciences). During Professor Lotay’s two-month research stay, they plan to make significant progress on a conjecture due to Professor Fine, relating knot in variants and minimal surfaces. As part of the chair, an international workshop will be organised in Summer 2026.
Professor Wydra’s research interests include Eastern European and Russian politics, democracy (comparative and theory), political anthropology, religion and politics, politics of memory, interpretive methods in the social sciences. His major publications include Continuities in Poland’s Permanent Transition (Palgrave 2001), Communism and the Emergence of Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2007), Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe (co-editor) (Routledge 2008), Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (co-editor) (Berghahn 2015), and Politics and the Sacred (Cambridge University Press 2015)
He will be welcomed at the ULB by Professor François Foret, President of the Institute for European Studies. During Professor Wydra’s one-month stay, they will work on a research project exploring the mutation of political domination and what it reveals from the changing interactions between power and culture in comparative perspective across time and space. As part of the chair, an international workshop will be organised in 2026-2027.
Professors Lotay and Wydra will deliver a public lecture in Spring 2026. More information will be available in due time on our website.
Please visit this page to know more about the application process to the Phyllis Beddington Wiener Chair. The call for applications for the 2026-2027 academic year is closed. The next call for applications will be launched in March 2026.