State and Statehood in the Global South Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

Miriam Fahimi is a social scientist and PhD candidate at the Digital Age Research Center at University of Klagenfurt. As a Marie Curie Fellow in the project “NoBIAS – Artificial Intelligence without Bias”, Fahimi researches the sociomaterial practices of AI technology in regard to bias, discrimination and power. Her research interests include theory of ethics, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and feminist theory.

Elmar Flatschart is lecturer and occasional researcher at and around the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests include a wide area of theoretical debates: Critical Theory (Frankfurt School, critical-dialectical theories of society), philosophy of science (Critical Realism), materialist state theory, critique of political economy, materialist-feminist approaches, political ecology (with a focus on energy as social relation) and social movements (with a focus on direct-democratic participation processes).

Wolfram Schaffar holds the chair of Development Politics at the University of Passau. Prior to this engagement, he taught at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna, the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, the Chulalongkorn University, Thailand and he served as regular guest lecturer at Yangon University, Myanmar, Jigme Shingye Wangchuk School of Law, Thimphu, Bhutan. In his research, Schaffar focuses on democratization and de-democratization processes, state theory of the Global South and social movements, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia.