Slavoj Žižek is a world-renowned scholar and the most provocative philosopher of our times. Born in Slovenia of former Yugoslavia in 1949, Žižek studied philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and received a doctorate at the University of Paris VIII in psychoanalysis. He gained prominence for his unique philosophy which fuses Lacanianism, Marxism, and Hegelianism, establishing himself as a philosopher unrivaled in his width and breadth of thought, which spans numerous disciplines from sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies to psychology and more. 

 His interests also run to politics, and he ran as the Liberal Democratic Party’s candidate for the 1990 presidential election in the Republic of Slovenia. Žižek, a practicing theorist as well as an intellectual, is a prolific writer and publishes two to three books each year. His most well-known works include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Looking Awry, and The Metastases of Enjoyment.

 Eva Illouz is the Director of Studies at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and teaches Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Zürich University in Switzerland. Illouz brought emotions from the private sphere into the public sphere by analyzing emotions through a sociological lens instead of a psychological perspective, which had been the norm. Through her 30 years of research into emotions and capitalism, she proved how capitalism changes human emotions. Her research into this topic gave her a reputation as one of the most innovative and original researchers in the world and one who united the two seemingly incompatible areas of emotions and the economy.

 The American Sociological Association awarded her book, Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, with the Outstanding Contribution Award in 2000. She later recieved the Best Book Award from them in 2005 for Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture. In 2009, Die Zeit, a German newspaper, named Illouz as one of the “12 thinkers most likely to change the thought of tomorrow,” and Le Monde, a French newspaper, named her “a pioneer of a sociological approach to emotions” in 2011. In 2018, Illouz was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit, for her contributions to sociology.

 Judith Butler is an American philosopher, gender and queer theorist, and post-structural feminist. She is currently working as a Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. In the 1990s, Butler authored “Gender Trouble,” which proposed the gender performance theory and made a significant impact on feminism and queer research. It sold over 100,000 copies worldwide, and was the most-borrowed book on human rights at the prestigious Seoul National University Library. 

 Butler is considered one of the most influential political philosophers in today’s world and shares her opinions on gender and LGBTQI rights, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Neoliberalist Activism.