SPEAKERS

Dr Prashant Shukla is currently working as Assistant Professor (Philosophy) at University of Lucknow, Lucknow (since 2010). Also, he is the Visiting Faculty of BITS-Pilani for Symbolic Logic. Prior to this, he has worked in Stephens College, D.U. and Hindu College (D.U.) as faculty of Philosophy (2008-10). He has completed his Doctoral research on Postmodern Philosophy from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2006) and Post-Doctoral research on Classical Greek Philosophy from Kapedistrian University of Athens, Greece (2008). He has been recipient of National (UGC-JRF-2002) and International (Greek Government Scholarship-2006) Awards in Philosophy, His areas of research interest are Greek Philosophy, Postmodernism and Logic with some considerable publications in the form of Research Papers (8 in no.) and Co-authored Books (9 in no., some of them used as Textbooks by the Directorate of Distance Education, Tripura University, Vinoba Bhave University and Jamia Millia Islamia). He has coordinated one National Workshop (2017) and one National Seminar (2019) under sponsorship of ICPR.

Dr. Shivani Sharma is affiliated with Philosophy, Panjab University, where Dr. Shivani Sharma is currently working as Associate Professor. She has authored and co-authored several national and international and also works as a reviewer for reputed professional journals. She is having an active association with different societies and academies around the world. Dr. Shivani Sharma made his mark in the scientific with contributions and widely from honourable subject around the world. Dr. Shivani Sharma has received several awards for her contributions to the scientific . Dr. Shivani Sharma major research interest involves Indian Philosophy Aesthetics, Logic and Human Values and Professional Ethics.

Dr. Himani Chaukar, is the head of the department of Philosophy, Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College, Mumbai and a Yoga trainer from Kaivalyadham Institute, Lonavla. She is a certified Philosophical Consultant and Logic-Based-Therapy practitioner. (Logic-Based-Therapy and Consultation Institute, USA). She is now the director of the Mumbai, India Center for Logic-Based-Therapy and Consultation established in Collaboration with the US Institute of LBT. She also is the managing editor of the International Journal of Philosophical practice Published by the National Philosophical Counseling Association, USA (NPCA)

She is a recipient of Asiatic Society’s research fellowship for Social Sciences and best research project award in the state level inter-university research convention ‘Avishkar’. She has also received Research grant from Mumbai University for her project on 'Philosophical Counselling: Indian Philosophical Approach'.

Dr. Suchitra A. Naik is presently Associate Dean Humanities, University of Mumbai and Principal of VPM’s K.G. Joshi College of Arts and N.G Bedekar College of Thane University of Mumbai (UoM). She is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and has long standing teaching, counselling and research experience spread over 3 . Her key contributions include teaching philosophy to undergraduate and postgraduate . She is a counsellor to several teenage . She has provided to a few institutions in establishing counselling centres and is the head of counselling centre at her . In addition,she is member of Marathi Sanshodhan, a co-opted member of the board of studies in philosophy and logic and a resource at UGC HRD Centre of UoM. Further, she has published papers at State, National and International level journals.

Lydia Amir (Israel) - Professor of Philosophy, President of the Israel Association of Philosophical Practice, lecturer at Tufts University (Boston, USA).

Rick Repetti, PhD (CUNY 2005), Professor of Philosophy at CUNY/Kingsborough, is author of The Counterfactual Theory of Free Will: A Genu­inely Deterministic Form of Soft Determinism (Lambert 2010), Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency? (Routledge 2017), Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom (Routledge 2019), The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (Routledge 2022), and dozens of articles and chapters on Buddhism, meditation, free will, philosophy of religion, and contemplative philosophical pedagogy. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Philosophy Practitioners Association (APPA), the editorial board of The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and was on the board of the former journal, Science, Religion, and Culture. He was chair and previously associate chair of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Philosophy in Two-Year Colleges, and is a Fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Rick is also a yoga and meditation practitioner since 1973, an instructor in both since 2000, a 4th degree blackbelt in Shotokan (Japanese) karate, an APPA-certified philosophical counselor, a certified cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) practitioner, certified mindfulness practitioner, and certified life coach, with two years training in Gestalt psychotherapy. https://www.rickrepetti.com/.

Shanti (Barbara) Jones (USA) - Ph.D., Transpersonal Psychology, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Certified Philosophical Counselor in Private Practice. Teacher of Character Development and Emotional Intelligence in schools. She also writes and performs philo-cabarets, the latest being "What's it All About" on of life.

Katerina Apostolides holds a master's degree and is a candidate for PhD in the field of political philosophy at the political science department of the University of Chicago. She has worked as a philosophical counselor and as a professional conflict mediator in New York City and Athens, Greece (where she is currently based). She is the co-founder of Philosophical Counselors Connect, an online professional development group for philosophical counselors around the world to be able to trade ideas and insights. She also runs a weekly discussion group in Athens that is titled, "Exploring Honesty, Practicing Philosophy."

https://www.eudaimon-counseling.com/

Luis de Miranda lives in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden, and is a philosophical practitioner and a researcher at Uppsala University, where he currently works on the theory and practice of philosophical health at the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Sciences. A PhD from the University of Edinburgh (2017), Luis is an international author of non-fiction and fiction (although he decided to stop writing fiction in 2011). Some of his books, for example, an introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics or Who Killed the Poet?, have been translated into a dozen languages. His essay Being and Neonness was published by MIT Press in 2019, and Ensemblance by Edinburgh University Press in 2020.

José Barrientos-Rastrojo is a tenured Professor of Philosophy at University of Seville and the leader of several University Research Projects on Philosophical Practice. In fact, he created the first empirical research on Philosophical Practice in the world (download the results of the article here). Some of his projects have been funded by his university, others by the European Union and international universities such as the University of Chicago. BOECIO is a project to train in philosophical skills to inmates in Latin American prisons (Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Brasil) and it has been asked to spread out in all the world (Turkey, Portugal, USA, Italy,…). Barrientos-Rastrojo is the leader of the “Experiencialidad” research group, as well as the director of HASER. International Journal on Philosophical Practice. After defending the first European dissertation on philosophical counseling (2009).

He has received the Award Cooperation Acknowledgment (2018) and the first International Award on Philosophy (2018) in Mexico, the first International Award of Philosophy in Portugal (2014) in Portugal and the first National Award on Philosophy “Le figure del pensiero” in Italy (2012).

Dr. Ashwani Kumar is an Associate Professor of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University. His teaching and research focus upon meditative inquiry, which is a self-reflective and aesthetic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living. He has conceptualized several key curricular and pedagogical concepts, namely, curriculum as meditative inquiry, teaching as meditative inquiry, and music as meditative inquiry. He has also developed a contemplative research methodology called dialogical meditative inquiry to conduct subjective and inter-subjective qualitative research. He is the author of two scholarly books: Curriculum As Meditative Inquiry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Curriculum in International Contexts: Understanding Colonial, Ideological, and Neoliberal Influences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He has served as the President of Arts Researchers and Teachers Society, Canada.

Ashwini Mokashi is a published with entitled 'Sapiens and Sthitaprajna', published in 2019 on the topic of the wise comparing the Bhagavad Gita and Stoic Seneca. She currently teaches a course called ‘Wisdom Leads to Happiness’ at the Evergreen Forum in NJ. She writes on ancient Indian and Greek philosophy in order to interpret them in of challenges faced in modern life. She is a former President of the 'Princeton Research Forum' in Princeton, NJ and continues to be on their executive board, while also running the Humanities Group at the PRF. She has taught Philosophical courses at the SP Pune University, Wadia and Fergusson Colleges in Pune. She has studied at SP Pune University, King’s College London and Rutgers University, NJ. She has also worked in Fortune 50 companies in HR in the USA.

Michael Picard holds an MSc and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught philosophy, psychology, sustainability and leadership, as well as other subjects at various institutions in North America. He is currently an instructor in the Philosophy Department at Douglas College.

Picard’s first book, This is Not a Book: Adventures in Popular Philosophy, is an international bestseller and has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Estonian, and Greek. He is currently writing two new books, to be released soon.

Lekshmi is presently working as Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Kerala, Trivandrum.For the past five , she was heading the Dept of Philosophy, Govt College for Women,Trivandrum affiliated to Kerala University. Philosophy is a passion for her. She has supervised 5 theses for which Ph.Ds were awarded and 5 more are working with her for their degrees . Her thrust areas include Vedanta, Analytical Philosophy and Continental . Her Ph.D is from Kerala University where she did her doctoral on Humanism Of Vivekananda: Some Reflections. She has completed two research projects funded by UGC. She has co-edited and published , Philosophical Perspectives of Hermeneutics and published articles in international national journals like JICPR and IPQ. Some of them include Ethics of Science in Its Epistemic and Practical Goals, Written Structures and the Question of Identity etc, She lives a life trying to follow spiritual ideals and carry the same to the world around.

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Avaneesh is the founder of 'Le Mantastic', a beautiful green space where he focuses on the inner potentials of individuals through amalgamating philosophy, psychology, art and nature. With a background in Medicine, Avaneesh went on to complete his Master's degree in Philosophy from Kerala University, India and another Master's degree in Clinical Psychology from Indira Gandhi Open University. He is also a certified practitioner of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA). Currently he is also a consultant with the National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) on a project named ‘Innovation by

Youth with Disabilities’ (I-YwD) by the Govt of Kerala. A consultant for various organizations and programmes, Avaneesh has also been collaborating creatively with brands and broadcasters like Walt Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Discovery Channel, YouTube, Amazon, among others. An ardent practitioner of philosophy, Avaneesh is currently doing research to develop a philosophical archetype for inner transformation with the University of Kerala. A believer in the immeasurable possibilities of the individual, Avaneesh intends to make individuals realize their true potential through meaningful and profound interactions.

Dr. Raghwendra Pratap Singh is a Professor at the Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067. He has been twice Chairperson of Centre for Philosophy, thrice Member of the Academic Council and of the University Court, besides being member and Chairperson of various committees in the University. He has also been twice Member of the Governing Body of ICPR besides being Member of Board of Studies of many Universities in India. He has to his credit 19 books and over 180 articles published in different peer-reviewed journals in India and abroad, besides being a member of the Editorial Board of many National and International Journals. He has participated in more than 500 National and International Seminars, Conferences, Workshops, and Symposiums in India and abroad.

Sergey Borisov (Russia) - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Director of the Scientific and Educational Center for Practical and Applied Philosophy of the South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk), Head of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of the South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University (Chelyabinsk), President of the Association of Philosophers practitioners "Ratio", leader of philosophical cafe.

Since 2014 Sergei Borisov has been actively promoting philosophical practice and philosophical counseling among adults. He conducts courses, as well as individual and group counseling, for those who would like to practice philosophy, philosophize not in the “school” academic tradition, but on the worldview issues and problems that fill the world of everyday life. Active participant of two international conferences on philosophical practice, which took place in Serbia and Switzerland; participant of the “Philosophical Companionship” program, which unites representatives of different countries working in the on-line counseling.

http://raphp.ru/

Patrizia F. Salvaterra, M.A., is an APPA-certified philosophical counsellor based in Verona, north-eastern Italy. She graduated with honours in Philosophy from the State University of Milan, where she served as a research fellow and lecturer for some years, focusing on Phenomenology, Aesthetics, Ethics and Philosophy of History. She wrote and published mainly on G.W.F. Hegel, E. Husserl, F. Lyotard, L. Dumont, and Postmodernism. In the last years she has collaborated with the University of Verona as a member of the teaching staff. Patrizia is also a scientific journalist and an expert on communication matters, merging philosophical knowledge and practical expertise in her work as a counsellor, trainer and consultant.

https://appa.edu/user/salvaterrap/

Dr. Vasile has his PhD. and Postdoctoral studies in Philosophy, bachelor’s degree in economics and law.

Academic / Research Affiliation: Lecturer (collaborator) at Faculty of Political Science, Philosophy and Sciences of Communication (West University of Timisoara); Director of the Research Department for Philosophy at Institute for Social and Political Research (WUT), Editor in Chief at IRCEP journal (www.ircep.eu).

Professional affiliation: President of The Romanian Association of Philosophical Counseling and Ethics, practitioner certified by APPA.

Research interest is oriented for interdisciplinary links between philosophical practice and ethics applied in many areas, such: economics, community, social responsibility and environment, personal development, bioethics, education, organizational consultancy and leadership, democracy and society, groups facilitation, communication, alternative conflict resolution, philosophy for society.

André de Almeida is a Philosopher, Philosophical Counselor and Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral (Brazil). For five years André has been an Associate-Tutor in the philosophy department at the University of Sussex (UK). He has also previously worked at the United Nations as a consultant, and as a researcher in International Business. André has a MA in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Philosophy both from the University of Sussex. He is the author of the book “Agent Particularism: The Ethics of Human Dignity”. https://appa.edu/user/andre.almeida/