Lene Auestad

Lene Auestad, www.lawritings.net (PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oslo) writes and lectures internationally on ethics, critical theory and psychoanalysis. She has written on the themes of prejudice, social exclusion and minority rights, and has contributed to public debates on hate speech. Her book Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice combined critical theory with psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies, examining the underlying unconscious forces and structures that make up the phenomena of xenophobia, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and sexism. It provides an overview of how social prejudices, and the discrimination and violence that often tend to accompany the latter, come into being. Auestad has also written about the rise of nationalism in European countries, both in terms of its expression in extreme far-right groups and in the context of everyday political language and policy. In 2010 she founded the international and interdisciplinary conference series Psychoanalysis and Politics, www.psa-pol.org which continues to this day with annual conferences in different European countries.