Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer & Caroline Pauwels About Truth

2020 was undeniably the year where conspiracy thinking, algorithms and polarization demanded attention in the public debate. During Pilar ASAP - The Echo Edition we'll focus our attention on what is so important in all these phenomena: truth. The evening will start with a keynote by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer about the importance of truth in 2021. Rector Caroline Pauwels will then enter into conversation with Pfeijffer. You can follow the entire program via our Facebook page.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer is a poet and writer. He has distinguished himself in almost every conceivable genre and is recognized as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Dutch literature. He has more than 40 titles to his credit, including poetry, novels, short stories, plays and essays. In 2014 he was awarded the Libris Literature Prize for his book La Superba. In addition to an ode to Genoa and its inhabitants, La Superba is primarily an impressive ode to the imagination. His great novel Grand Hotel Europa was published at the end of 2018 and is about love in times of mass tourism, European identity, nostalgia and the end of an era. The book has sold over 200,000 copies and the translation rights have been sold to 20 countries. His most recent work Quarantaine is a compilation of the almost live report for the newspapers about corona from badly affected Northern Italy during the first months of the pandemic.

Prof. Caroline Pauwels started her second term as rector of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the academic year 2020-2021. She studied philosophy and communication sciences and has been associated with the communication sciences department since 1989. She obtained her PhD in 1995 for research that focused on the audiovisual policy of the European Union (EU). Subsequently, she specialized in European and national media policy issues and the economy of the media sector. From 2000 to 2016, Caroline Pauwels was director of the SMIT research center (iMinds / IMEC). She was awarded the domestic Francqui Chair by the University of Ghent in 2014 and was holder of the Jean Monnet Chair between 2012 and 2016. She also sits or sat on various boards of directors, until recently as government commissioner at the VRT and she is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts.