NOTES ON AUTHORS

Pierre-Yves Baudot is Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) in the University of Paris XIII and Associate Researcher at the Centre d'études européennes (Centre for European Studies), Sciences po in Paris. After studying French presidential funerals from the Third to the Fifth Republics, he has worked on the policies of administrative reform focusing his research on the introduction of computers in French Administration (1960-80). His current research centres around two specific area : relationships on the frontline of welfare services, i.e., between the administration and its public on the one hand, and public policies with regard to the people with disability on the other. He has recently published “Aux Grands Hommes, la Patrie désintéressée. Coût et financement des funérailles d'Etat en France (1877-1996)” in Histoire et Mesure, special issue on “The Price of Dealth” (forthcoming) (with Anne Revillard): “Le Médiateur de la République : périmètre et autonomisation d'une institution” in Revue Française d'Administration Publique, special issue on Le Défenseur des Droits (December 2011); “L'incertitude des instruments. L'informatique administrative et le changement dans l'action publique (années 1960-1970)”, Revue Française de Science Politique, 61 (1) 2011.

Bjørn Thomassen is Associate Professor at the American University of Rome. His current research engages anthropological theory, urban anthropology, social theory, Italian politics & contemporary Italian history. He has done research on nationalism and the anthropology of borders and boundaries, with fieldwork carried out in the border area between Italy and Slovenia and the Istrian peninsula (the focus of his Ph.D. thesis). He is particularly interested in how anthropological ideas and approaches can inform political and social theory and the study of contemporary politics. Recent articles include, “Anthropology, multiple modernities and the axial age debate” (Anthropological Theory 2010), “Renarrating Italy, Reinventing the Nation: Assessing the Presidency of Ciampi”, (with Rosario Forlenza, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2011), “Anthropology and its many modernities: When concepts matter” (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2012).

Arpad Szakolczai is Professor of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland. His recent and major publications include The Dissolution of Communist Power (Routledge 1992), Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works (Routledge, 1998), Reflexive Historical Sociology (Routledge, 2000), The Genesis of Modernity (Routledge, 2003), and Sociology, Religion and Grace: A Quest for the Renaissance (Routledge, 2007), as well as articles and essays among others in Social Research, the American Journal of Sociology, the British Journal of Political Science, the International Review of Sociology, International Sociology, Theory, Culture, and Society, Theory, current Sociology, the European Journal of Social Theory, and the European Sociological Review. He is currently finishing for Routledge a book manuscript entitled „Comedy and the Public Sphere‟, which intends to go beyond Habermas‟s rationalistic account by demonstrating the central importance of the re-birth of comedy, from the late Renaissance onwards, in forming the modern democratic public „arena‟.